Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Solid choice for an HTPC, May 13, 2008
This product replaces a Hauppaugge PVR-150 in my HTPC. The quality on analog signals is significantly better, and adds the ability to receive digital signals. You can use both tuners at the same time via picture-in-picture, or watch one tuner while recording on the other.
The analog tuner (NTSC) has input for coax or S-Video. If you use s-video, the audio is received by an adapter that plugs into a mini-jack just below it.
The digital tuner is for receiving ATSC (OTA) or QAM (cable) signals. It only has a coax input. If you go for OTA ATSC of course you are subject to reception issues just like any other antenna. Since it's digital, it really either works or it doesn't. If your signal is strong enough you get a clear, beautiful picture. If it's not strong enough, you get squat, or even worse a freezing stuttering picture. I live in the suburbs and the antenna is in the basement and I get most channels at 70-80% signal, but this is a entirely dependent on your antenna and not this tuner.
This card also supports unencrypted clear QAM. Cable companies are supposed to (and I think most if not all do) send local digital channels on their basic service. So you should be able to watch your local channels, but not premium channels like HBO since those would be encrypted. Vista Media Center (and I think MCE2005 as well) do NOT support QAM directly. The included AverMedia software receives these with no problem, and Avermedia has a beta plugin that enables it in Vista Media Center (google "clear qam in vista media center" and its one of the first few that come up). However, there are other options such as MediaPortal (for windows, this is what I use) or MythTV (for linux, I don't use this but have heard awesome things about it) which are both open source (i.e. free) alternatives and support clear QAM.
If you are set on using Windows Media Center another alternative is the HD HomeRun, an external unit that also supports QAM and does show up in Media Center.
Other notes about this card, it is PCI-e and not PCI. All recent motherboards have more and more PCI-e slots (less and less PCI), but there isn't much to fill them with... Well, here is one. The tuners on this card are physically *tiny*, especially compared to the hauppaugge pvr-150 which has a huge NTSC tuner. All encoding is done by the card, so it puts very little strain on your CPU (watching HD content is another story).
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good bang for your buck!, October 31, 2007
I have been using this card on my vista Media Center for about a month or so now. Although the quality of the output does not match the comcast box (for 'digitised' analog channels), it is more than enough. Where I live, I don't pick up a lot of OTA HD stations, but the quality was very good for the ones that I was able to pickup with an indoor bunny ears antenna.
Aver has recently released a beta driver for QAM which will enable QAM on vista. In some markes, this is a big deal as you can watch/record your local HD stations (and anything that is not encrypted by your cable company) on Vista MCE. But like any other beta, it requires some jumping through hoops.
Please note that you can either do only one of the following:
NTSC & QAM or,
NTSC & OTA HD.
Also, this is a PCI-express-1 card. Even if your mobo came with 2 PCI-Ex16 slots and 2 PCE-ex1 slots, you could have a problem if you are running SLI (2 video cards). enabling SLI usually disables the smaller PCI express slots. Read up before you pull the trigger.
For those looking for a tuner out of the box, the HDhomerun (network based - has QAM support for vista MCE) and the recently released Visiontek ATI 650 combo tuner (No QAM on vista yet) are good choices.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nice Product @ Good Price, May 31, 2007
Before purchasing this card, I read a lot of reviews on PC TV tuner for my new system. Out of all the products review and user experience I read, I decided to give this card a shot. [...]
So the card arrived and I plug this in to my new Vista MCE 32bit system. Goto their website and download the driver. Installation is easy, no error msg pop up, driver is logo-ed. I went to Vista MCE setup (nice & easy 1,2,3) and found both analog and digital connection (make sure you are connected the Coax Cable to the card). I have a roof top antenna, so the digital reception I have is SUPER. What amaze me is the analog video quality (read their spec and see 3D comb filter). So I tune to ESPN and HBO, very nice in fast motion as well.
When I download the driver, I see they have a application available for QAM (un-encrypted Digital Cable). So I go to their website again and downlaod the application (FREE). Plug in the cable feed to the ATSC RF connector on M780. Take a little bit time to understand how to configure the card with QAM. Then I "hit" scan (a good 30 minutes later), found 40+ channels. I checked one by one and see half of them are audio only channels "Music" and the rest are local TV channels. To be honest, I would still prefer my Roof Top Antenna over the cable on local TV channel in HD.
Thoughts... I gave a 5 stars because it is a great product and a great price. It performs as what it said on their web. Good video quality on both analog and digital (Good antenna does help a lot on digital side). It does run hot, but it is acceptable (it won't burn your finger like graphic card does). May build another system with two of this cards so I can have 4 tuners in one system...
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