PCI or USB???

[jolson]

I'm looking for a decent Freeview tuner after an unfortunate run-in with an eBay Freeview USB stick over Christmas.

The Hauppauge Nova-T PCI looks reasonable, and although the reviews and opinions of it aren't unanimous, there seems to be enough of them out there working, and the price is right.

My question is.... is there any performance (or other) advantage to using a PCI card rather than a USB box? I've got a spare PCI slot in my computer (as well as 2 spare PCI-E, but can't find any reasonably priced PCI-E tuner cards) and several spare USB 2.0 sockes, so fitting isn't an issue. I also don't have a laptop (yet!) so portability isn't a high priority either.

Is there another similarly priced card that is a better bet?

Cheers

John

[cameluk]

Use my Nova-T PCI without any problems, my system hibernates after recording and have always found that USB devices on my motherboard don't recover when coming out of hibernation

[ricklous]

while on the flipside...ive both USB and PCI versions of the nova on the PVR and the USB has never failed out of hibernation...

and im not sure how you'd go about working out weather a specific motherboard would resume the usb out of hibernate without actually buying and trying it either. maybe its something to do with the usb power settings within the bios? i have mine set to power the usb in standby so it can be resumed from the remote. weather this makes a difference, im not sure...

[jolson]

So.... Is there any difference between the USB and PCI? Speed? stablility? Can you tell them apart when they are running?

Cheers

John

[martint123]

I think the Nova-t-500 PCI card is USB anyway, it's just that it's on board. I suffered 'death after standby' but after tweaking some device manager power settings it seems to work now. Got mine from ebuyer recently and the tuner certainly seems more sensitive than the external Kworld external usb box.

Martin

[K.S.]

So.... Is there any difference between the USB and PCI? Speed? stablility?

speed is definitely different but should not really matter. i have no problem to record a full TS (4 different DVB-T programm streams) over USB. stability is rather a matter of the drivers, as long as you dont have general issues with your board

[Graham]

I have two Nova-T PCI cards and a Nova-T USB2 in one computer.

I have poor TV reception and the USB box does a better job with the weak signal (not that it has anything to do with it being USB - it uses a different chip).

On good days, when I have adequate signal, I cannot tell the difference between a recording or a Live TV session from a PCI card or from the USB box.

I haven't noticed any problems with resuming from hibernate but I have only used it a handful of times.

[jolson]

Well, I got the PCI card this afternoon. It's a 90003 (says 909 on the box).

Installation has been painless and the WinTV2000 software installed, so I know it's working.

Now to get GBPVR working........ can anyone point me to list of settings that will work with this card?

Cheers

John