VistaView Saber 2020

[drivendriver]

By any chance, has anyone tried the VistaView Saber 2020 dual tuner card with BeyondTV or Vista media center?

This board uses the same chip as the nvidia Dual TV, but it is PCI-E. See http://www.vistaview.tv.

Cheers!

[Bigbird999]

A $20 rebate is on the site too!!!!

BB

[drivendriver]

Originally Posted by Bigbird999

A $20 rebate is on the site too!!!!

Yep. Very, very tempting for someone who doesn't have a single PCI slot in his system.

[mattyx79]

Yeah, I am also curious if this works with BTV 4.4

[WCressman]

I contacted VistaView about BeyondTV compatiblity and received the following reply:
--------------
It should. Our drivers are BDA and they usually play well with BDA
compliant drivers.

We have a known issue of supporting multiple cards in one PC. We are
working on it, but it does not work yet.

Please keep me informed of your progress. We love user feedback.
--------------
Given that the Vistaview is $20 cheaper than the nVidia DualTV (after rebate) and is pci-e (will that make a difference?) I might give it a whirl.

Wayne C.

[cmcquistion]

Pretty interesting card. It says it support ALL standards (NTSC/PAL/SEC).

Pleas post back and let us know if it works. I've got a friend in Australia who is in the market for a tuner card and this may be perfect for him.

[Shimon]

Hi,

One user has reported back to us that she installed the Saber 2020 with BeyondTV 4.4 and everything "just worked". If anyone has any issues, please report them to us as soon as you can. If there other satisfied users, please let me know.

Thanks

Shimon

Vista View

[drivendriver]

I finally picked up a Saber 2020 yesterday. Here are my impressions:

- Generally speaking, it works with BTV.
- Quite often, BTV complains that it was unable to start live TV. When this happens, live TV usually starts on the second try.
- Starting live TV and switching channels take longer than with my Plextor TV-402U. I guess this is due to the silicon tuners.
- At first I was getting horrible quality from one of the tuners. I'm not sure why. In the end I installed the latest drivers, I set capture 1 as the default capture device and capture 0 as the secondary, and quality is decent.
- Images are noticeably grainier with Saber 2020 than with my TV-402U. I guess this may have something to do with signal strength and with the silicon tuners.

On one hand, I'm disappointed. On the other hand, the TV-402U is the only tuner I've owned in several years, and I wanted to find out how it compares to the latest generation of products. It seems it still has plenty of life in it.

[GeorgeH]

I just installed a STDV VistaView dual tuner and 2 HDTV Cat's Eye tuners.

They play together well in Windows XP with BeyondTV.

Due to my needs I just ordered a seond VistaView. (That fills all of my PCI and PCIe slots.)

[JHawker]

Not sure if any of you persue the HTPCNews website, but there are few using the card that have posted comments here:

http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index...9&hl=vistaview

I have a Hauppauge PVR-500MCE that is a Type B card with one tuner working like crud.

I have worked with Snapstream tech support (purchased the card through them) and the beta drivers don't fix it. Apparently, there is something in the works to fix/replace the cards in November, but I don't want to wait.

Once I get RMA approval for my HP500, I am going to order the Vistaview as it rides in the PCI-e slot. That way I will have an open PCI slot I can drop a HDTV tuner card into.

Cheers,
JHawker

[bjterry62]

I have the trial copy of BTV running on the Vistaview now and PQ is quite good. I'm debating whether to pull the trigger on BTV since I purchased another app a few months ago but have run into some issues setting it up with the system. I need simple because of the non-technos that will be running this system from time to time. But as for the card, it does a great job. One thing though, you may have to split the cable and connect to both RF connectors on the card. There seems to be an issue with the cards internal signal splitter. However, if you're not using FM, the splitter seems to work fine.

BT

[cmcquistion]

Originally Posted by bjterry62

I have the trial copy of BTV running on the Vistaview now and PQ is quite good. I'm debating whether to pull the trigger on BTV since I purchased another app a few months ago but have run into some issues setting it up with the system. I need simple because of the non-technos that will be running this system from time to time. But as for the card, it does a great job. One thing though, you may have to split the cable and connect to both RF connectors on the card. There seems to be an issue with the cards internal signal splitter. However, if you're not using FM, the splitter seems to work fine.

BT

Yeah, my friend in Australia noticed the same thing. The documentation says that it has 1 RF TV input and 1 RF FM input, but he doesn't get a signal on the second tuner unless he hooks up to the other input. I found this rather strange, since I assumed it worked just like the Hauppauge and Nvidia dual tuners, where they split the signal, internally, to two tuners, instead of requiring multiple coaxial connections.

[bungle]

Originally Posted by drivendriver

- Images are noticeably grainier with Saber 2020 than with my TV-402U. I guess this may have something to do with signal strength and with the silicon tuners.

Are you getting a good picture with analog cable? I tried removing all splitters so I basically just had the outside line coming (through a couple of male/male connectors) into a signal booster and then straight through to my Saber and the picture was still pretty noisy. The picture is very good on my PVR-150, but it is also kinda bad hooked right up to my tv (same cable each time). The basement tv is always very good, but is smaller so it may be harder to tell. I'm trying to figure out if my signal really is bad, or the cable segment from basement to upstairs, or this card just needs a very good signal.

VistaView knows there's a problem where the loopthrough is closed sometimes. If it is open RF1 can be used for both tuners and RF2 for FM (like a PVR-500). The latest drivers on the website were supposed to have a tray app included to control the loopthrough but I did not find that to be the case. An external splitter is the workaround.

[cmcquistion]

Originally Posted by bungle

VistaView knows there's a problem where the loopthrough is closed sometimes. If it is open RF1 can be used for both tuners and RF2 for FM (like a PVR-500). The latest drivers on the website were supposed to have a tray app included to control the loopthrough but I did not find that to be the case. An external splitter is the workaround.

That's good to know. Thanks.

[Bigbird999]

I was suprised to read in the htpcreview link that you can install a PCIe 1X card in a PCIe 16x slot. Not sure why anybody would even try this but they did and apparently it works.

BB