Need recomendations on hardware

[seansco]

I am setting up a GBPVR system. Currently we have DirecTV and a digital antenna converter box. I would like to be able to watch live TV and record at the same time from either input source.

Any recomendations on a Capture Card?

[johnsonx42]

Perhaps a Hauppauge HVR-1600 (PCI)? Connect your DirecTV receiver to the S-Video input, and connect your antenna to the digital input. Don't use the converter box. Depending on what sort of DirecTV box you have, you can control it with a serial connection, or with the included IR Blaster (serial is more reliable and I believe a bit faster).

With this setup you can tune one analog DirecTV channel and one digital antenna channel at the same time. The HVR-1600 has one capture device of each type. It will encode the analog feed to MPEG-2 in hardware, while the digital antenna signal is MPEG-2 already (hence why you don't need and shouldn't use the converter box).

[seansco]

My DirecTV Box does have a serial connection and the pc I am using is PCI. Is there a Hauppauge card that will allow my to have 2 connections to DirecTV so that I can watch and record at the same time if I have 2 DTV receivers?

[johnsonx42]

PVR-500 could, but it's discontinued. If you can get one, you could hook up one DTV receiver to the SVideo input, and the other to the cable/antenna connection and set it up for channel 3. But then you'll need two serial ports, and then set up two copies of the serial channel changer each configured to the correct port... or I suppose you could control one by serial, and ir blast the other.

There's also the HVR-2250, which has 2 dual-mode tuners, but it's PCIe.

You could also just go with two HVR-1600's. Then you could record/watch two digital channels and two DTV channels at once. For the second HVR-1600 you wouldn't need the complete kit so you might be able to find a deal on an open-box/bare/used card. Be aware there are several flavors of the HVR-1600; some include the remote and blaster, one uses a usb ir receiver and blaster, while others use a receiver and blaster that connects to the back of the card, and there's another that doesn't include a remote or blaster. For your viewing pleasure: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLis...rchInDesc=

[seansco]

Thanks for all the info!