Which tuner

[nate39]

Hi, I am wanting to buy a new tv tuner card for my computer. After installing vista my creative sound card will not play nice with vista but my old leadtek tuner card will not work right with my realtek onboard sound. The sound is ok until I go to record something and then I get no sound playback.

I have been wanting to upgrade to a digital card anyway. I have heard that Happ. has hardware decoding while my old Leadtek is software but I don't know enough to be able to tell by reading descriptions which has which. Here are the two I am looking at as I am trying to keep it under a $100. Could anyone tell me which one of these two are better and why or is there another one I could look at. Overall I have been happy with my leadtek. Thanks

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6815122008

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6815116009

[blisbell]

This is the model I have and qam/atsc work fine with gbpvr.This one does come with remote blaster for settop box and works fine.When these came out only a couple models did qam 1178 is one of them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6815116007

[nate39]

thanks

[pcostanza]

In one of my systems, I have the same model as blistell workin g well though I've not had much luck with QAM mostly due to my cable company. It also appears QAM has a much better shot using the included Hauppauge software (which is buggy IMHO).

[smiley2billion]

This thread is a little old, but it reminded me of a question.

"I've not had much luck with QAM mostly due to my cable company. It also appears QAM has a much better shot using the included Hauppauge software (which is buggy IMHO)."

With my cable company (Insight) I can hook up a TV that can receive QAM channels and it'll find 15 or 20 channels just fine. Some of these are HD and look pretty nice. I've ordered 2 of these Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 ATSC/ClearQAM/NTSC cards for a GB-PVR server I'm building to eventually serve content to a PCH A-110.

Why would the Hauppauge software be "better" or at least have a greater success rate at finding QAM channels? Obviously we're talking about unencrypted channels here, but I was just curious as to what would cause this. Seems to me that the channels would either work or not work regardless of the software trying to find them.

I've seen this bit of information before about the bundled software being able to find QAM channels "better" but never an explanation as to why that would happen.

[sub]

I'm not aware of any reason the Hauppauge WinTV software would get more QAM channels. In fact, to the contrary, I often see posts on other forums saying people find more channels with GB-PVR than they do with the Hauppauge software. In theory they should see the same channels though.

You may have be led down this line of thought by reading some old posts with my standard comment when a user posts about not finding any channels in GB-PVR, to which I usually ask them to check if they can find channels in the Hauppauge WinTV software. I'm usually just asking them to do this to verify a few things...specifically - they've got the signal connected to the correct input of their device, and their card is functional, and their broadcaster is transmitting unencrypted QAM channels. ie, if it doesnt work in Hauppauge WinTV, then its unlikely to work in GB-PVR. If it does work in Hauppauge WinTV, then it'll most likely work in GB-PVR.

[whurlston]

If you are missing channels with GBPVR that show up in WinTV, it is most likely because you are scanning the wrong frequencies.

[mvallevand]

When I used to get a lot of clear QAM GBPVR scanning from my HVR 1600 was consistently better then WinTV.

Digital TV is vulnerable to weak signal strength. If you have added a split to your PC and then used a four way split at the PC to feed both devices this might cause some problem. If you can feed once device directly to see if it has the same issue.

If you have a way of viewing mdb files, you can view the frequencies the WinTV finds in hcwChanDB_5.mdb

Martin