2x fusion 5 lite?

[tek]

Hi, just looking for a little input from anyone who's had experience with hdtv capture. I'm considering getting two fusion 5 hdtv lite cards. First question, could my pc (dual core opteron 165 ~ 1.8 ghz, 2 gigs ram, nvidia 7950gt, capture to sata raid jbod) handle capturing 2 shows at once, or is that just hoping for too much?

a second question... the connector for the antenna, is that just a plain coax connector? can the connections for a nice hdtv over the air antenna be split 3 ways ~ to the 2 tuners and an hdtv?

thanks in advance.

[Arative]

Hi, just looking for a little input from anyone who's had experience with hdtv capture. I'm considering getting two fusion 5 hdtv lite cards. First question, could my pc (dual core opteron 165 ~ 1.8 ghz, 2 gigs ram, nvidia 7950gt, capture to sata raid jbod) handle capturing 2 shows at once, or is that just hoping for too much?

a second question... the connector for the antenna, is that just a plain coax connector? can the connections for a nice hdtv over the air antenna be split 3 ways ~ to the 2 tuners and an hdtv?

thanks in advance.

The rig you have will have no problem capturing two shows at once, from what I understand capturing hd streams takes almost no cpu power. Capturing 2 at once and watching a record show may give you problems but I'm sure others on this forum could answer that better than I could.

http://www.antennasdirect.com/DB2_Indoor_antenna.html

This is the antenna that I am using to capture my hd signals, uses a standard coax cable. I currently have it split 3 ways, 2 hd cards and the tuner in my tv. I get between 85% and 100% signal strength at all times on all channels but the farthest I am away from the hd transmitters in my town is 10 miles. I am also lucky that they are all in the same direction from my house. Check out antennaweb.org it can tell you how far and in what direction your hd stations are from your house. If they are in radically different directions, you may want a different antenna.

[rgann]

As Arative says, HD capture with 2 cards shouldn't be a problem. However, you might have problems with THAT particular card, because of limited system IRQ problems. I had nothing but trouble from my F5lite until it finally died after less than 9 months of use. The company wouldn't respond to my RMA request so I trashed it (good riddance). Anyway, you might want to research Dvico's ... peculiarities regarding IRQ steering. Some people swear by that card. I just swore at it.

Antenna should be ok split 3 ways with a passive splitter. If you have trouble you can get a boom amp or an active splitter. Good luck.

[tek]

so what cards are you guys using now then?

[rgann]

I've been pretty happy with my Airstar hd5000. The BDA drivers are in beta, but appear to work flawlessly. I don't know how 2 of them play together.

[Arative]

I use a fusion5 RT lite and kworld 110 for my hd. pvr 150 for analog.
I'm so waiting for a cat's eye 164e to come out, its a pci-e dual tuner card, can do either atsc or analog, no qam support yet tho. It's been on vbox's website for the last 6 months and supposedly last week the first shipment has hit the US.

[sub]

I'm so waiting for a cat's eye 164e to come out, its a pci-e dual tuner card, can do either atsc or analog, no qam support yet tho. It's been on vbox's website for the last 6 months and supposedly last week the first shipment has hit the US

I dont know anything about this specific mode, but if I were buying one these days, I'd be looking for one with hardware encoding on the analog side - you may want to check if this specific model has this.

[Arative]

I dont know anything about this specific mode, but if I were buying one these days, I'd be looking for one with hardware encoding on the analog side - you may want to check if this specific model has this.

I don't care so much for analog, ever since I got a high def tv, I watch as little analog as possible and the pvr 150 covers that for recording. From vbox's description each tuner is capable of either atsc or ntsc but like I said I'm getting it for the atsc, analog is just a secondary bonus.

[acegolfer]

I have 2 F5L cards in my machine and it works perfectly.

[animal99]

First of all, the Fusion RT5 Lite is a great card, if you don't hope to use WinXP-64 bit or Vista 64 bit. There are no drivers for it, and will only work if you're using Windows XP.

I wrote Dvico (Fusion) about drivers for it and this is what they wrote back - The bad grammar is theirs so don't pin it on me:

..............................................................................................................................................................................
Hi.
We're working the lite-64bit driver right now.
But i think it takes much time, so we recommend to use the GOLD model to make sure.
If you want to return, you'd better contact to the place you bought it.
We are sorry that we couldn't get you a good answer.
Thanks.
...............................................................................................................................................................................

If you intend to use this card, make sure you're using it on a machine you won't use for anything else. Any corruption or disruption of your machine while you're using it for a PVR will make the CPU consumption past 50% and cause numerous skips and stutters.

Also, keep your OUTDOOR antenna a few floors above traffic - I traced some video skipping to interference problems even though my reception was 100% by the Fusion signal meter (built-in software). The card is more sensitive than my Panasonic HDTV - so it picks up signals well, but it also picks up the weaker interference just as strongly. AT least in my situation.

Steve