NextPVR Forums

I am planning to set up GB-PVR for my parents. Personally I've been running MythTV for several years, but it is more than I want to support for them.

I've read the wiki and some of this forum. I'd like to know if I have the right impression on the best capture cards for GB-PVR. I want a capture card that is as rock solid as you can get, supports ClearQAM and analog, and is as affordable as possible. I only need 1 tuner for now, and I have PCI, PCI-e, and USB inputs available.

It seems the Hauppauge HVR-2250 is the gold standard. The HVR-1950 also looked interesting. I was initially leaning towards the HVR-1600, until I discovered it has poor ClearQAM sensitivity for many. I also saw the HVR-1800, but I don't know where it fits in all of this. Does anyone have thoughts on these, or other capture devices you may feel are better?

I was initially conflicted between MediaPortal and GB-PVR. After researching, it seems most people believe GB-PVR is more robust, and the support for media extenders really encouraged me to go with it. Hopefully the PCH A-200 will be supported soon, otherwise I guess I'll have to get an old A-100 for them.

Thanks to all the developers. It sounds like this is more polished than MythTV and will set up relatively easily.

My 2250 is much better for Qam then my 1600's, that being said in order to get all the clear Qam channels working in GBPVR I had to do multiple scans and use the wizbda tool to map the channels. Each scan I did would find different channels while Wintv7 found them all right away.

I'm in the same boat with my 1600. Even Media Center has trouble not loosing the channels. My 2250 has been rock solid and I have had a number of Hauppauge cards and feel comfortable with them even with their very slow driver updates.

I have a 1600, 1800 and a 2250. For me the 2250 is so much better than the other two.

The 1600 gets all the QAM channels, but when Comcast moved them to new frequencies I ran into problems. My TV, Set Top Box & DTA could all still get the QAM channels when going through my cable amplifier, but the 1600 could not. I had to add another splitter & give it the signal from before the amp. Now, it gets all the channels again.

The 1800, which is basically a PCI-Express version of the 1600, doesn't seem to get any QAM channels, ever. I bought it off EBay when the 1600 wasn't working & assumed it would be better. Wasted a lot of testing time trying to get the 1800 to work for QAM when I could have been diagnosing the above issue with the 1600. I might try contacting Hauppauge to see if I can swap it for an 1800 that works for QAM.

In the unlikely event you want to read my original post about my problems & solution, see http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=45101.

Your 1800 story sounds a lot like my experience. I had a 1600 that worked reasonably well, then I picked up a new 1800 cheap on ebay so I could record two QAM channels. The 1800 did not work with QAM at all. I exchanged it with the ebay merchant. The replacement did not work either. I then sent it to Hauppauge. They replaced it. The replacement sort of works, but not nearly as well as the 1600. One of the main problems I had with the 1800 was scanning channels. The tuning frequencies it would discover usually did not work. I would have use the ones from the 1600. I would have recordings fail to start, stop partially through the recording and/or many with screwed up timelines that would need to be remuxed.

I finally got fed up with the situation and got a 2250 about 3 months ago. For me, it works so much better than even the 1600. At this point, I am just using the 2250.

I've had great results with my hvr-950q, although it's clear QAM/ATSC only and won't work with analog with gbpvr..