Dual tuner card beside PVR 500?

[StupaFly]

I built a new PC a couple weeks ago...in that build I got a PVR500 (Hauppauge). The reception sucked bad for lower channels so I'm currently RMA'ing it with newegg. However, I've noticed other folks giving it bad reviews for this same thing so I'm not optimistic about getting a better card. My question is if there's another dual tuner card that is supported in gbpvr. If it makes a difference, I'm in the US using cable (no cable box for regular analog signal).

And if anybody is terribly curious, the new PC includes the following: Asus P5W-DH Deluxe, Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4, 2GB Corsair 4-4-4-12, XFX Geforce 7900GS GDDR3 256-bit 256mb, Hauppauge PVR 500, Antec TruePower 550, NEC DVDRW, Sony DVDROM, Thermaltake black aluminum case, and all the trimmings.

Any recommendations on another working dual tuner card that encodes mpeg2 on board would be greatly appreciated.

Andy

[sub]

There is an Adaptec AVC-3610 Dual tuner card which some people use with GB-PVR. It apparently works well, but I dont have first hand exposure to it, so cant give you much more than that.

[bungle]

There's the NVidia DualTV (http://www.nvidia.com/page/dualtvmce.html) or the AverTV Purity 500 (http://www.aver.com/mpd/purity500.html). I think in both cases there's a conflict with nForce motherboards, which you do not have. I do not know if they work with GB-PVR, but I don't see why they wouldn't.

EDIT: See post #2: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=19577
Not sure if it still applies.

[UncleJohnsBand]

I built a new PC a couple weeks ago...in that build I got a PVR500 (Hauppauge). The reception sucked bad for lower channels so I'm currently RMA'ing it with newegg. However, I've noticed other folks giving it bad reviews for this same thing so I'm not optimistic about getting a better card. My question is if there's another dual tuner card that is supported in gbpvr. If it makes a difference, I'm in the US using cable (no cable box for regular analog signal).

And if anybody is terribly curious, the new PC includes the following: Asus P5W-DH Deluxe, Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4, 2GB Corsair 4-4-4-12, XFX Geforce 7900GS GDDR3 256-bit 256mb, Hauppauge PVR 500, Antec TruePower 550, NEC DVDRW, Sony DVDROM, Thermaltake black aluminum case, and all the trimmings.

Any recommendations on another working dual tuner card that encodes mpeg2 on board would be greatly appreciated.

Andy

Would be interested in knowing what drivers you were using.....from my experience most problems with the 500 and 150 were resolved with the 2108 drivers....which can be found here.

Sometimes when you get your card it has been around for a while and nativley ships with out of data drivers.

[bungle]

Newer 500 cards have Samsung tuners instead of Philips ones, and these seem to have more problems.

[StupaFly]

I tried the newest drivers from Hauppauge website, and also drivers from shspvr. Nothing worked. I'm quite sure it was the same thing everyone else was experiencing.

Does anybody know if the PVR 150 cards are now using Samsung chips as well? From what I understand, a 500 is almost identical to 150 chipsets (except there are 2 sets). I'll settle for 2 of the 150 cards if they aren't putting these crappy chips on them as well.

[zed]

I have a couple (two) 150MCE cards that are surplus to my needs that I'd be willing to sell for a decent price. Not sure which tuner they have but they worked just fine for me. PM me if interested...

[StupaFly]

That might be an option...You live in the US right? I'd prefer to buy a couple 500's with Philips tuners though. Don't suppose you have any of those do you

[wahh]

I don't know anybody who does the homebrew pvr stuff so I haven't really been able to compare image quality. i just got a PVR500MCE last week. The reception does look bad on lower channels and random channels throughout, but other channels do look good. I'm not sure if they could look better though. Compared to my tv's "tuning" the reception I'm getting on the PVR500 looks bad though. I don't really know what to expect from a pc capture card. I have seen HDTV rips of television shows on the internet and they look like a dvd. The quality is so nice. I am definately not getting quality like that. Granted I am capturing from analog cable. Does somebody want me to post a screenie of my reception? If so, how do I make a screenie of it. PrintScreen usually never works on video.

I was thinking about just going the dual PVR250 or dual PVR150 route. Do the PVR150-non-mce's suffer from the same problems as the PVR150MCE's and PVR500MCE's with the samsung tuners? What about the 250MCE's? I would prefer some type of MCE version becuase having the composites built in is kind of nice, even though I will probably rarely use them.

As for the PVR150-non-mce's, they come with an IR blaster that can change a cable box's channels right? That might be rather enticing since I don't really feel like springing for a USB-UIRT later.

Does anybody really know which PVR cards Hauppauge has "infected" with the Samsung tuners? I guess that's what I am getting at.

P.S. I did pop the shields off of the tuners and that helped a bit, but I still get faint diagonal lines and some crosshatching.

[StupaFly]

I was going to just order a couple 150s myself but I'm unsure of whether they are infected (nice word :p). So I actually got the VistaView Saber 2020. It has dual tuners, hardware encoding, and it's PCI express (x1) interface. It's shipped and scheduled for delivery 10/24. I'll post my likes/dislikes once I get it working.