Any tuner better than HVR-2250 for QAM/ATSC?

[Anthony]

I have two Hauppauge HVR-2250 cards, for a total of four tuners. One of the tuners already failed a year or so back, but the other tuner on the card was still working. Now it's looking like I have another tuner failing (I think on the other card, naturally).

Before I order new HVR-2250 tuner cards, I'm curious if there are any better QAM/ATSC tuners on the market now? I've been happy with the HVR-2250's, but they've only lasted about three years. They've also been somewhat marginal tuners (a lot more signal errors than I see on my TV's).

I would prefer internal, but external is OK if the tuners are better quality.

Has to work with NPVR, of course.

I don't have a cable card, just picking up the free QAM stations.

What say you? Another HVR-2250, or something else?

Thanks,

Anthony

[whurlston]

The 2 ATSC/QAM tuners that I recommend for NextPVR are the HVR-2250/1250 for internal and the Silicondust HDHomeRun for external because they simply work well and are time tested with NextPVR. sub (and the NextPVR community) also has very good relationships with both manufacturers. The VistaView Saber DA-1N1-I/E was also a very good choice but they are hard to find anymore. There are others that work but some require registry entries to be set (K-World/PCTV) and others are a crap shoot (ATI TVWonder).

[Anthony]

whurlston,

The 2 ATSC/QAM tuners that I recommend for NextPVR are the HVR-2250/1250 for internal and the Silicondust HDHomeRun for external

Do you know which of these two tuners are the most sensitive? Which requires the least system resources?

Thanks,

Anthony

[whurlston]

The 2250 seems to be a little more sensitive than the HDHR but I have older HDHRs. Both use pretty minimal system resources if you are just installing the drivers (the HVR-2250 works with Windows 7/8 inbox drivers). Tuners themselves don't really use system resources even when recording from them. It's the playback of content (or software encoding of analog channels which neither tuner does) that uses the resources.

One thing, if you still have analog channels, go with the 2250 because the HDHR does not have an analog tuner.

Silicondust has announced a new version of the HDHR that will include hardware H.264 encoding that will require less hard drive space for recordings.

[Anthony]

I guess I'll stick with the HVR-2250. I'm already familiar with it, and it doesn't sound like anything better has come along.

I don't record as many shows these days, so I think I'll just go with the one card and limit myself to two recordings at once. I should get slightly better signal too by not splitting it to two cards.

Thanks for the feedback!

Anthony

[whurlston]

Keep in mind that with NextPVR and QAM, you will be limited to recording two frequencies at once, not two programs. For example, my NBC and CBS channels are both on the same frequency (physical channel 72) from my cable provider, so I can record both of them using only one tuner.

[mvallevand]

For others reading this for OTA ATSC I don't have the HVR 2250 but I do have the HVR 1600 which is generally considered inferior an two other. I also have a cheap Chinese knockoff antenna and a higher end antenna that came highly recommended. My ATI 65O ($40) even with the cheap antenna is far better than my hdhr3 ($80) which is I consider equal to the HVR 1600 ($90) since neither make weaker channels better.

Martin

[Anthony]

Keep in mind that with NextPVR and QAM, you will be limited to recording two frequencies at once, not two programs. For example, my NBC and CBS channels are both on the same frequency (physical channel 72) from my cable provider, so I can record both of them using only one tuner.

Is there any trick to recording two programs on the same frequency? ABC and NBC are both on channel 72 for me. I could select shows on those two channels in the TV guide, but I couldn't select a third show on Discover (a different channel frequency) in the same time slot. Luckily, Discover repeats the show in the early morning hours, so I was able to select that time slot instead.

Before I spent money on another tuner, I decided to disconnect and disable the tuner I knew was bad. This messed up my configuration significantly, so I had to delete my npvr.db3 file and set everything up again. Now that I have things up and running again, I'm not seeing any of the signal errors I was experiencing. I don't know if the damaged tuner was causing problems, if one less splitter in the line increased the signal strength, or things just started working temporarily. I will need to keep an eye on it, but I may have saved myself the cost of a new tuner.

Anthony

[Anthony]

I don't have the HVR 2250 but I do have the HVR 1600 which is generally considered inferior an two other.

I had a couple of HVR-1600's before I bought the 2250's. Most of the signal problems I had with the HVR-1600 went away when I bought the HVR-2250.

Anthony

[BrainStormer]

I have a 2250 I'm not using since I Upgraded to a Prime, and I'll be in Vancouver, Wa in the morning. If you're interested.