Analog cable and OTA HD tuner card?

[DeadlyShadow]

I want to add OTA HD to my existing BTV system. I currently am using a Hauppauge PVR-150 for my analog cable capture.

Is there a card that could replace the PVR-150 for analog cable capture and capture OTA HD? I really want/need a card that will do hardware encoding....

Or, would I be better off just getting a separate HD card? (If so what do you recommend?)

Thanks!

[mlomker]

Originally Posted by DeadlyShadow

Or, would I be better off just getting a separate HD card? (If so what do you recommend?)

There are few cards that do HD and SD in the same card. The Vbox 164e is the only card that I heard of but it's brand new and does software encoding on SD. HD doesn't need encoding, btw, since it is already a digital stream...it's decoding/playing the image that requires CPU power.

The best ratings I've seen for a commonly available card is the Vbox DTA-150. I bought one due to reviews that I've seen from many people on various boards. I've been very pleased with the picture quality.

The Fusion has wide support (Snapstream sells them) but the reviews are mixed.

[Rich A]

Most of the early combo digital and analog tuners used software encoding for their analog. The digital is of course just a "stream copy" to your hard drive which is even better in most cases than a hardware encoder.

Also keep in mind, that (AFAIK) most combo tuners can only use one input at a time. You can only use either the digital or the analog, but not both at the same time.

Your best bet is to go the route of a separate digital tuner to add to your system. I have the old ATI HDTV Wonder and one of the newer Hauppauge HVR-950 USB digital tuners. Of the two, the HVR-950 has a better front end (receives weaker signals better) and is less prone to being affected by multipath reception. Plus it is an external USB device so all you need is a good USB-2 port. Preferably a USB-2 directly off your mother board (no hubs etc.)

Right now I'm running both the digital tuners and 2 old PVR-x50 analog tuners and they all work nicely together. (note, I'm thinking of getting rid of the ATI in favor of another HVR-950, just to free up some more PCI slots in the HTPC and get a little better reception)

[Bigbird999]

The ati theatre 650 has both a hardware analog tuner and digital (HD) tuner. Lots of good reviews. Not sure you can record both at the same time. With apvr 150 aand a hd tuner you can record both simultaneously.

BB

[johnd]

I have a Digital@nywhere-ATSC by MSI and it seems to be working alright in Beyond TV. I haven't done much in the way of recording as I am new to Beyond TV (running the trial 4.5) and unless you have a dual tuner, you can't record and view at the same time.

[tscales]

The ATI TV Wonder 650 as mentioned will do both, but it is a single tuner card -- only one thing at a time, either SD OR HD, not both.