Need some upgrade advise

[derath]

Hey all,

I have been a looong time user of BTV. Although I have never really gotten to use it to its potential. My old old TV never interfaced well with it so I mostly have used it to record shows and convert into itunes format.

Now I have a nice new HDTV and want to set things up to use it as originally intended. But I have a few questions.

Also, the irony is that I upgraded my TV and other components so that I could cancel my crappy, overpriced comcast service. It factors into my questions below.

First, I am going to be primarily using my BTV for watching and recording OTA broadcast signals, as I no longer have cable or satellite TV. Therefore I am looking for a digital tuner for getting OTA channels. It has been my understanding that I don't have to worry about hardware MPEG encoding with digital broadcasts, although I wouldn't mind confirmation that it is true. I am also thinking USB might be best, as my current BTV box has only PCI slots and a newer machine might not, or be small form factor. USB seems the best bet for future proofing. I am at a loss as to the best USB device to buy.

Second, I will eventually be upgrading my BTV box. I would prefer something small, but I could technically fit a mini tower box in my entertainment cabinet. My big question is whether there is a computer that either has a built in or an add in video card that has a full HDMI interface (that would handle both audio and video).

Thanks!

-D

[gambitpvr]

Personally, I have four Pinnacle PCTV HD USB sticks on my system. Since the Digital transition happened, my reception has been fantastic (before the transition, it was hit and miss). I'm fairly sure these do not have hardware encoding, they just simply dump the entire broadcast stream to a mpeg transport file and BTV cuts out the unneeded subchannels. Even with all of them recording at the same times, I have no issues with watching or playback.

PCI tuners have the advantage of being a bit neater than USB...you usually don't have to worry about accidentally knocking them loose if you need to move your computer or entertainment center around a bit. On the other hand, it's much easier to replace a USB tuner or to add more USB tuners to the system since you don't have to open the case. At most, you may have to add a powered USB hub, like I did.

I've had great luck with my Pinnacle sticks but the Hauppauge HVR-950Q also seems to be a fairly popular choice of BTV users on the forums. You could also go with a Silicon Dust HDHomerun. It has 2 tuners and connects via Ethernet. I have a couple that I use for Clear QAM off my cable, but they do OTA HD as well. From what I hear, they have a really good tuner for picking up OTA, but they are a bit pricey, compared to USB tuners.

There's several motherboards out there that have HDMI out but, I'm not familiar enough with any of them to say if they work well or not. I've seen posts on the forums going both ways so, it may just be hit and miss.