OTA HD Card suggestion requested

[dinki]

First off, I know VERY little about HD so be gentle. I am wanting to get a HD card to add to my existing system (see sig below) to get over the air local HD broadcasts. A guy at work told me all I really need is rabbit ears and I can tune into a fair amount of the local stations (I live only a few miles from him).

Can someone give me a suggestion on the best value (read cheapest working but not total garbage) PCI HD capture card that will coexist with my two PVR150s?

Many thanks!

[zed]

I had a Dvico Fusion 5 Lite in my system with two 150MCE's for a while and it all worked just fine. I think that card can be had for around $100.

Problem is, I don't have anything to watch the HD stuff on but my computer monitor, which gets old real fast, so I sold the Fusion card. I picked up an HDTV converter on eBay that receives HD OTA and down-converts to SD. I feed it into the svideo input on a 150MCE. That works pretty well and the quality is much better than what I get off the cable. Just another alternative.

(I assume you're in the U.S. or Canada...otherwise, this probably won't work)

[dinki]

Yes, I am in the US. I don't have any HD ready TVs either.

I do have cable AND DirecTV. When I got my cable modem they forced me to get the basic cable package ($15 per month). Now, this is an option, but I kept it to get my local stations (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, etc).

What I'm trying to do is find a replacement for the basic cable package that still provides the channels with a good picture. Plain old rabbit ears and standard broadcasts appear extremely snowy if I can catch them at all. I realize that I will not be getting the full impact of HD this way, but I'm really just trying to save money and have a decent picture.


How much was the HDTV converter? Is it a settop box? How do you handle channel changes? Can you provide a name/model so I can look into the details?

I'm curious as to others' opinion on this as well ...

[zed]

The converter is an RCA ATSC-11. I got it for $100, IIRC. It's actually an HDTV receiver as it will receive all the ATSC formats and output to a monitor in about any definition from 480i up to 1080i...outputs over DVI, component, svideo, etc. It's a set top box with its own remote. It receives only OTA, not cable. There are others out there that do the same thing (Samsung, Motorola, etc.) but this one happened to be on eBay when I was looking. I feed the svideo output at 480i into one of my 150MCE's using an IR blaster (MCE 20005) to do the channel selection (there's a little problem with this box & IR blaster but it works OK for me, however YMMV, depending on your channel line-up). It's kind of a round about way to do it but it works well. Picture quality is better than anything else I have. Plus, when/if I get an HDTV of some kind, if I need the box, I'll already have one...

I think a few other folks here use a similar set up.

The problem I ran into with using the Fusion card is that I didn't have any way to watch the HD shows I recorded except on the computer. I used WMP to watch them because for some reason they didn't seem to play back well using GBPVR. For me, watching TV on the computer isn't all that great, even tho it looks really good on my Dell LCD monitor. If/when I get an HDTV I'll probably spring for another Fusion card and use that.

Anyway, just another approach...

[marm]

I have the Fusion Lite 5 card and so far I am totally satisfied with the card. It is working with no problems in gbpvr and I have no problem receiving all my local stations.

[nitrogen_widget]

What type of antenna do you use?
I bought an "HDTV amplified" magnavox rabbit ears for the mother-in-laws TV from walmart last yr.
It was all they had at the time for rabit ears so I bought that.
It worked marginally well in her all steel & brick apartment until she got cable.
I now have it.
It doesn't work very well for SDTV tuner cards so i'm wondering if it'll work any better for an HDTV tuner.
I'm also wondering if there is different circuitry designed for HDTV or if it's just advertising.

I've been watching some of my friends HDTV recordings & with an occasional pixelation glitch here & there I've decided I like watching HDTV even though it's on an SDTV & letter boxed & thinking of a tuner card.

However I don't have an attic & i'm not keen on putting an antenna back on my roof.

So i'm curious as to just what type of arial i'd need.

[dinki]

Can someone tell me how I can check to see if my video card is a DXVA based VGA card? I see that if it is the system requirements for the DVICO are way lower if it is not. I'm using a Radeon 9000 card.