Recommend a TV Tuner card? (WINDOWS 7) (XMBC)

[mvallevand]

I have two neighbours that simply pulled the plug on cable and have gone with OTA ATSC which seems to be an increasing choice I got my ATI card that I use for ATSC for $40 with another $20 for an antenna and it very reliable. Clea rQAM is also an option but I think the cable companies are now restricting channels so much to force people to go cablecard and get their extra monthly revenue.. Looking at Newegg most Hauppauge single and dual tuner card are in the $70-100 allowing you one or two ATSC or clear QAM recordings.

Martin

[SickBoy]

Where are you finding those devices listed for $100? The ones I'm pulling up are 150-200. I'd like to keep it close to 100.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6815345007

Note - that's not the model that accepts cablecard. Like others have mentioned, if your local cable co starts encrypting everything, then it might end up being not real useful for much other than OTA.

[smajor]

If you're going with a CableCard from your provider, make sure they have no plans to turn the copy-freely flag off. I was looking at this with my Provider (Time Warner) and they have the copy-once flag set on everything. This makes the HDHR virtually useless with anything other than Windows Media Center.

[BrainStormer]

Here's The HDHR Prime which accepts a cable card. And has 3 tuners for $139

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-NA-_-NA

[R504]

Hi all, an update (Not so good)

After looking into the HDHomerun Prime I contacted my cable provider and asked what channels I would recieve in ClearQAM. I was told I would receive about 80 channels. So I asked if there were any plans to change this and start encrypting QAM channels and they said no. Based on this info I decided to go with a the cheaper HDHomerun Dual (~80USD vs ~140 for the Prime). Today I plug it in and find I can only see a very small fraction of what was promised, only 15 channels and most of them local. I checked out Silicondust's site only to confirm my suspicions, Cox in baton rouge only broadcast a handful of channels in ClearQam.

I was disappointed so I called my cable company again and asked why this was. The three operators and their supervisor had no idea what ClearQAM was and after a 15 minute wait during which they contacted "engineering," they told me I could only see channels with an "aftermarket device" if I bought one with a CableCard slot and rented a cablecard from them. I asked why I could see the channels with my older WinFast TV2000xp card and was met with confusion. I could see this wasn't going anywhere, so I thanked them for their time and that was that.

So I think I will be sending back the HDHomerun Dual a bit disappointed but I am not giving up on this idea yet. My suspicion is that the cable company is actually transmitting their channels in analog NTSC, which is why I can only pick them with the WinFast tv2000xp. Alas, that card is not supported in NextPVR. So I ask, is my suspicion about NTSC likely to be correct? If so, what is a good option for analog NTSC input to Nextpvr? I would like it to meet the same specs as I outlined in my original post.

Thanks for your time and knowledge.

EDIT: Using Newegg to narrow my options, I'm looking at the following cards as possibilities:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcom...116-043-TS

[SickBoy]

You're not going to get any better of a result with any of those cards, you'll still only get the channels that are broadcast in ClearQAM.

Sorry about your experience calling the cableco's TS, your experience is (unfortunately) a typical one. Their dumbass front line TS people are more or less rebadged sales people who tell you to buy more equipment from them. They are, however, correct when they say that you will need a cablecard to receive your full lineup.

There are two ways around this: use a Hauppage HD-PVR or Colossus in tandem with a Set Top Box, or use the HDHR Prime with a cablecard.

This is the situation that most of us statesiders are in. There are really only a few channels (mostly local channels) that are broadcast in ClearQAM. For me - I only purchase a very basic level of cable service, so that's about all I get anyway - so the ClearQAM HDHR arrangement works for me.

If you wanted to continue using the analog signals, you could look at a Hauppage analog card (like the PVR150 or similar), install the SoftPVR components and use it with NPVR, as documented in the installation thread.

[R504]

> You're not going to get any better of a result with any of those cards, you'll still only get the channels that are broadcast in ClearQAM.

Can you explain to me why this would be? Each of those cards contains an analog NTSC tuner.

Just to remind you, I do have an older card which is getting me the result I want (I believe this is because it contains an NTSC tuner in it.) but it is incompatible with my current system as well as NextPVR/XBMC.

[dljones8053]

If you have Cox beware getting someone on the line that can enable a cable card is no fun either, it took me 4 support call to get mind working, 2 calls just to get the correct codes enter so they could see the card and 2 calls to get all the HD channels I should be getting.

Only channel I could not get outside of the prime channels was TBS and who care if they want to copy protect it it there lost not mind, the HD Homerun Prime see around 350 channels but like I said channels like HBO, CMAX and so cannot be recorded with Next PVR but who cares I don't have prime channels anyway.

I really enjoy my HD Homerun Prime and recording 3 shows at once is great, I use NMT and XBMC clients as I never watch anything off the PVR that handles all my recording as it sets in area of the house that is not used much (a room in the basement).

dj