Nova-T --- PCI or USB??

[NumberFive]

Hi everyone,

I need to buy a new tuner to replace a broken HVR-900. Would you recommend sticking with Nova-T USB (thereby givening me more flexibility to build a nettop server) or a Nova-T 500 PCI (is this a better option for reliability / poor signals)?

Look forward to the discussion!

[trummel]

I've got both and to be honest there is nothing to choose between them from a GBPVR usage point of view, so go for price or ergonomics, whichever works for you. I have found them both to be reliable and UK DVB-T quality pretty good. Think about a DVB-S2 card though (I use a technotrend), BBC-HD and occasional ITV-HD is really nice and a sky dish is pretty cheap and works well even in marginal DVB-T areas.

[Graham]

I've got both and to be honest there is nothing to choose between them.

Ditto

[NumberFive]

Nice, cheers guys!

Given my fascination with getting a nettop, USB looks like the option for me!

Thanks!

[Graham]

For the avoidance of doubt, I have the Nova-t USB2 and it ain't small I can't speak for the reception or whatever of any Hauppauge "stick" devices. The AF9015 that I have is a stick and it has more trouble with dodgy reception than the Hauppauge devices that I have.

[trummel]

My USB is a Nova-TD Stick, which is small. It actually has dual tuners and 2 aerial connectors. It can be configured in 'Diversity' mode so that both aerials are used for 1 tuner in weak signal areas or as dual seperate tuners. I've never managed to get the dual mode working in GBPVR though, but YMMV. I actually only use a single tuner and a single aerial lead with GBPVR now.

One thing worth mentioning, because the USB version is designed to work with little portable antenea, it has a built in line amp. If you use it with an external signal booster/splitter,you need to use an inline attenuator to get reliable recordings.

If you try to hang one of these out of the back of a neat STB server,with 2 x coax and 2 x attenuators it will all look a bit ungainly, so you might want to put it at the end of a usb extension lead.

[drain]

I'm sure the Nova-T 500 works fine for a lot of people, but be aware that it is not without its issues. See this thread.

[gEd]

I had loads of problems with my nova-t usb.

I suspect that many of these problem were due to using an older motherboard (Athlon XP) but the problems with the remote not waking from standby and occasionally doing double key presses were definately due to the nova-t usb itself (hauppague send a new remote and I still had the same problems)

I also had lots of timestamp/skipping problems with my usb tuner, which again may have been due to other usb related problems. I seem to recall people saying to avoid usb chipset X and stick to chipset Y (possibly NEC)

With the PCI card, the timestamp and double keypress problems went away. The wakeup problem went away when I upgraded to a new mobo.