Hvr 950/1250/1600/1800

[opilion]

Apart from the different interfaces (USB/PCI/PCIe), and the hybrid vs. dual tuners, will all of these cards do OTA ATSC recording equally well? Do they all have the same CPU requirement, or does one or the other do more processing onboard?

op

[TheSmJ]

Personally I'd reccomend the 1800 (PCIe) card before the PCI card because the "legacy" PCI buss will be phased out in a couple years. Any USB device has CPU overhead attached to it every time the device transfers data, and as you can imagine this happens quite a bit with any video tuner.

I know both the 1600 and 1800 use the same tuning hardware, and the only difference is the interface itself, so it really comes down to weather or not you have PCIe available on your motherboard (and if not, you might want to upgrade the rest of your system before messing with HD tuning).

I wouldnt be suprised if the USB devices use the same, or very similar hardware, but its a moot point since you'd be best staying away from a USB device for this sort of thing anyhow.

[opilion]

I can pick up a new white-box HVR-1250 - PCIe with a single hybrid tuner for $50. Is anyone using this card?

[Fickey]

FYI- the 1250 NTSC tuner is not a hardware encoding tuner like the 150, 500, or 1600. Also, supposedly the 1600 will capture closed captions, but the 1800 won't (not sure if that's limited to NTSC).

[opilion]

Originally Posted by Fickey

FYI- the 1250 NTSC tuner is not a hardware encoding tuner like the 150, 500, or 1600.

This is only relevant for analog capture - correct?

Does the 1250 handle ATSC identically to the 1600 and 1800?

Does the 2D vs 3D Comb Filter have any effect on ATSC, or analog only?

op

[Darkk]

I must warn you the 1800 does NOT support closed captions. 1600 does flawlessly.

I've confirmed this with Hauppuage tech and he did say the 1800 does not support it. Bummer. The 1800 card is incredible but lacked one thing I needed the most which is closed captions since I am hearing impaired.

Darkk

[opilion]

I decided to keep my PVR250 for NTSC and add an HVR-1250 for ATSC.

op

[Fickey]

Originally Posted by opilion

This is only relevant for analog capture - correct?...

Correct. I don't know the answer to your other questions, but I suspect ATSC is identical across those 3 cards.

[Fickey]

Originally Posted by Darkk

I must warn you the 1800 does NOT support closed captions. 1600 does flawlessly...

Darkk, is that just for analog? Do either the 1600 or 1800 handle captions for ATSC?