Which tuner would you choose?

[sub]

I need a PCI-e tuner and was interested in the HVR-1800 though I am not a big fan of their software and PQ isnt as good as others I've used for analog. I'd be interested to know if you get it to work with your software Sub, if you do and it's fairly painless to setup then I'd probably buy one

I've never tried any ATSC/QAM devices myself (other than a couple hours spent on remote desktop/vnc about 18 months ago), so havnt tested the HVR1800 myself.

I have talked to the Hauppauge engineers about this recently though, and apparently what I'm doing for the HVR1600 should work fine on the HVR1800 for QAM support. If anyone gets a HVR1800, and has problems getting QAM going, then I'll make sure they get it working.

[mvallevand]

Even the basic SD picture quality from the HDHomeRun is fantastic compared to the s-video fed PVR150.... which just really looks like crap in comparison. Watched a few shows in HD and wow

I agree about SD QAM quality on an HVR 1600. Even it 528 x 480i 3Mbs picture quality is much better than analog cable. It shows that the bit rate for capture really doesn't need to be high. I should not really surprised on my Big Ugly Dish, when I could get "real" analog network and live sports feeds, the quality was amazing in comparison to what the cableco provided.

One point on this, which may not be intuitive, is that the digital picture quality should be the same with any digital tuner. The only difference will be the tuner's sensitivity to receive the stream with the minimum number of errors across the entire spectrum.

Martin

[Torque]

I would have thought the picture quality of the HDHomeRun would have been comparable to the digital picture from my Dish Network's STB going from s-video to the PVR150... but it's not, it's just so much better. Which makes me wonder if the s-video cable needs replaced or maybe i should try the composite or coax input instead?

[mvallevand]

I would have thought the picture quality of the HDHomeRun would have been comparable to the digital picture from my Dish Network's STB going from s-video to the PVR150... but it's not, it's just so much better. Which makes me wonder if the s-video cable needs replaced or maybe i should try the composite or coax input instead?

When I was talking about my B.U.D. I was talking about the commercial analog feed and not a consumer digital feed that has been converted to analog. It would be better to compare the digital output of FTA DVB-S to ATSC OTA or QAM but from what I understand there isn't too much FTA.

Martin

[sub]

This is why some users have gone down the multidec plugin path for their Dish Network setups, giving them the digital stream directly, rather than having to go through the lossy digital -> analog (STB -> analog) then analog -> digital (analog -> PVR150) conversions.

[mvallevand]

This is why some users have gone down the multidec plugin path for their Dish Network setups, giving them the digital stream directly, rather than having to go through the lossy digital -> analog (STB -> analog) then analog -> digital (analog -> PVR150) conversions.

It's a good alternative to MyTheatre for Morticia too... if I dared proposing it.

Martin

[Torque]

LOL!

Would you happen to know what the replacement is for the Twinhan 102g? It has been discontinued and I'm not sure of the replacement.

[kayak4ever]

II understand that QAM is the feature that allows you to record digital cable.
I receive digital cable from my cable company but I haven't hooked my pvr-150 with analog up to it. Although I saw the feature in the config panel that lets you set the channel to a fixed external station such as "3" to allow you access to the tuner in the descrambler box so I thought I could record digital cable using my PVR150 but that the problem would be making sure the descrambler box was set at the right channel at any time that I wanted to record something. If I had a HVR 1800 (which might be overkill since I don't have a HD TV) and hooked it up to the digital cable box (which descrambles the signal), wouldn't I have to have the digital cable box set to the channel I want to record? The instructions that came with the descrambler box state that that is the case with recording to a VCR.

To summarize, I guess my question is whether QAM also acts as a descrambler (which seems to defeat the cable company's interest in making sure that digital is only available to the customers who pay for it).

[-Oz-]

To summarize, I guess my question is whether QAM also acts as a descrambler (which seems to defeat the cable company's interest in making sure that digital is only available to the customers who pay for it).

Simple answer: No.

The QAM tuners only can get channels "in the clear". Which means they're digital broadcasts that the cable company hasn't encrypted. Normally these are the local affiliates (ABC, NBC, Fox, etc) and sometimes some other random channels.