need usb qam tuner

[donschjr]

My pci slots are full so I'm looking for a usb tuner that can do qam tuning.

[whurlston]

Not USB but the HDHomeRun may be an option. Dual tuner and uses ethernet.

[donschjr]

I have considered the hdhomerun but I don't have a home network, know nothing about networking and would have to invest in a router on top of the price of the hdhomerun.

[whurlston]

The HDHomeRun can be connected directly to the machine so you woudn't need a router. As for USB, some people have had luck with the Pinnacle HD Ultimate Stick. I have not had much luck with it. I can't think of any other USB QAM tuner at the moment.

[Anthony]

The OnAir GT USB tuner (about $180) supports QAM cable and is compatible with GBPVR. I tried it for a short time but it didn't perform any better than my HVR-1600 PCI tuners.

If you're out of PCI slots, do you have any PCI-express slots available? If so, you might want to look at the HVR-1800 which is the PCI-e equivalent of the HVR-1600.

In any case, I haven't been able to use QAM cable reliably regardless of the tuner. There's something odd with my Comcast cable that lets me view it fine, but recordings often turn out a jumbled mess. I've had much better luck with an outdoor Channel Master 4221 antenna.

Anthony

[donschjr]

unfortunately the only pci=e slot I have has my video card in it. I have comcast cable and can reliably record all but 1 of the qam channels with my hvr1600. One quirk that my card has at times is it won't lock on a signal for a channel until I tune down or up one channel and get a picture the re tune to the original channel. Over all I don't think any of these cards have very good tuners. I'm thinking about just waiting for the next generation cards to come out and hoping they have better and more qam tuners on them.

[Anthony]

Don,

> I don't think any of these cards have very good tuners.

I agree. Analog is fine with just about any tuner, but I've had a LOT of problems with digital. I've tried the HDHomeRun, OnAir GT, and HVR-1600. NONE of them worked reliably with my Comcast cable. I can usually "watch" shows fine, I just can't record anything. It's like the timing signals are missing. The sound is fine, but the picture just looks like this mosaic of randomly jumping pixels. "Sometimes" everything seems to connect right and I'll get a good recording, but recordings fail often enough that I can't rely on them. I've updated all my cable wiring and even had Comcast come out and check my signals. My Samsung TV has absolutely no problem tuning in my cable connections, but none of the computer tuners have been able to.

Most of my problems with over-the-air material was related to signal issues. I tried a desktop antenna and a larger antenna mounted in my attic. Signal strengths were very erratic. Sometimes they would be great, other times they would drop to practically nothing. After fighting with the indoor locations for months I broke down and mounted the antenna outside on the gable end of our roof. Now I get a 28+ signal strength on every channel. My recordings have been perfect since then.

Except for three stations, the only QAM channels Comcast offers here are the local broadcast stations. So I'm not losing anything by using the antenna, and don't have to deal with cable issues. I just use analog to pick up the few remaining channels of interest on Comcast.

As for the full PCI slots, could you replace one of the other cards with a different option? For example, if you have a USB and a Firewire card, maybe you could replace them with a single USB/Firewire combo card. That sort of thing.

If you have an analog tuner in one of the other slots (i.e. a PVR-150), maybe you could replace that with an external USB tuner and get another HVR-1600 to install internally?

I don't think it's out yet, but I think Hauppauge is releasing an HVR-2250 soon that will have two tuners that do both analog and digital. Don't know about QAM support, or whether it will be a PCI or PCI-e card.

Anthony

[donschjr]

The hvr2250 will be pci-e which I don't have. My pci slots are currently populated by my modem, pvr 150, Hvr 1600 and the last slot is crowded by my pci=e video card and doesn't look like there would be enough clearance for a card. I still need 2 analog cards for some of my shows so I don't want to replace my 150 but I may wind up with no choice. I figured there would be an economical usb option by now but apparently not. I may not need anything soon as I'm so disgusted with comcast I'm considering shutting off the cable anyhow. They've raised the rates twice this year and removed 7 channels.
Don