Does USB tuner perform as good as internal ones?

[superman2012]

Hi ...

Does USB tuner perform as good as internal ones ?
For example : PCI-e dual DVB-T tuner vs USB dual DVB-T tuner
(don't care about the portability of USB tuner)

Only wish to know about the performance of USB tuner .

Heard when it gets too hot, video will freeze and jerk ?

Any issues with multi HD channels recording ?

Or any bad points for using a USB tuner ?

Sorry, no experience with USB tuner . All the while have been using PCI and PCI-e ones .
Thinking of getting an Avermedia Twinstar USB dual DVB-T tuner .

Thank you !

[martint123]

I have DVB-T2 (nanostick) and DVB-S2 (qbox) USB devices connected to my test machine and they seem to work fine with HD channels.

[Reddwarf]

I'v been using a Cinergy HTC XS USB tuner for a while now, and have not experienced any problems with it. But I can imaging that the usb-2 bandwidth may be stressed when recording more than two HD channels simultanously.

[superman2012]

Will it be better if I get 2 x single DVB-T USB tuner instead of a dual DVB-T USB tuner ?

[Lao Pan]

I did have one problem originally with a DVB-T2 Usb tuner which took me weeks to work out - the motherboard was not producing enough power on the usb sockets for the tuner - lots of freezing etc, which I thought was codec related.
After finding how hot the dongle was running, (Low volts = High Current = High Temp) I moved it on to a powered Hub where it has been fine for a year - never worked out if it was the Gigabyte motherboard (probably) or the PCTV nanostick that was at fault.

[martint123]

I did have one problem originally with a DVB-T2 Usb tuner which took me weeks to work out - the motherboard was not producing enough power on the usb sockets for the tuner - lots of freezing etc, which I thought was codec related.
After finding how hot the dongle was running, (Low volts = High Current = High Temp) I moved it on to a powered Hub where it has been fine for a year - never worked out if it was the Gigabyte motherboard (probably) or the PCTV nanostick that was at fault.

What were the symptoms? I use the same one and have the occasional oddity when it is in the HP microserver.... Hmmmm forgot about USB power.

[Lao Pan]

I think it was picture tearing, frame freezing and the stick was getting very hot - came very close to returning the stick. Then the brainwave of putting it on a hub.
I seem to recall that the only T2 chip available at that time was a Sony TV Chip which possibly was running below voltage on USB so drawing high current. - Also I think that later revisions of the Gigabyte MB I am using had uprated USB power.

[jcjefferies]

My original assumption was that big chip on the PCI cards must be doing some extra processing so taking some of the load from the main processor but this does not seem to be the case. I started off with a single Kworld DVB-T USB tuner dongle and have not been able to fault the picture quality on my 32” TV. With only one tuner NPVR often misses recordings I would have liked because it was recording something else at the time so I bought a twin tuner USB dongle which was on offer for less than I paid for the single tuner. Again I cannot fault the picture quality on my setup with the twin tuner.

Although I cannot say the USB card better or worse than an internal card but the picture quality is similar to that of SD programmes on my DVB-S2 STB and noticeable better than some channels on cable TV when viewing the same programme.