Recommendation for good (cheap :) ) HD tuner for UK Freeview?

[boringgit]

So my cheapie K-world tuner from Maplin has served me very well indeed, but I wouldnt mind having HD support... I'm paying for it in my TV license so why not enjoy it!

Does anybody have a model they would recommend?

USB would be my preference - I think my HP Microserver has a spare PCIE slot, but it's a bit crowded in there! That said, if people were raving about an internal card I could live with it

An aside - if I was to change my tuner, what will happen to the scheduled recordings? Also, is there an easy way for me to update any recordings scheduled for say BBC1 to BBC1 HD? Sounds like a SQL command would do the trick?

Thanks in advance!

Apologies of this has been asked before - I did search

[gEd]

I would like to rave about the Blackgold BGT3620 PCIE card. I have had one for 2 years and it has been faultless.
A PCI card is neater than having external boxes and more importantly, it avoids some of the weird USB problems one can encounter with certain motherboards when waking from standby. The card itself is absolutely tiny oh and it has DUAL tuners.

http://shop.blackgold.tv/BGT3620

However, it's definitely not cheap....

[martint123]

I don't think any dvb-t2 tuners are cheap!
I've been using a 290e nanostick http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_290e.html from before Hauppauge took them over. Works fine and since using newest drivers it is working fine in my test HP microserver - Although it does need to be connected to a powered USB hub as the microserver doesn't seem to have the grunt to power it. (think it's down to the early dvb-t2 chip being power hungry??).

[boringgit]

There seems to be a noticeable lack of second gen dvb-t2 kit on the market, with the current "stuff" all being 2-3 years old.

I have had great experience with hardware support from Hauppauge - last time I tried my nearly 15 year old wintv PCI card it was still well supported, but the external USB hub and single tuner are a killer.

The Blackandgold does look good and theoretically PCIE should reduce the CPU load versus USB.. but as you say it's far from cheap. Have you had any driver issues? Early buyers seemed to have big issues although these seem to have been broadly resolved.

[gEd]

I don't recall experiencing any driver problems. In fact for the BGT3620, they actually recommend that 8.1.1.2 drivers which are the same ones I initially used 3 years ago.
As BG are targeting the OEM market with their tuners, my take is that they have actually put some effort into ensuring that their drivers are stable.

[boringgit]

Ordered a second hand one for £70 - the previous owner had had issues with media centre - hope NPVR is kinder to it!

You mention waking from standby - does your MPC sleep between recordings?

[gEd]

Ordered a second hand one for £70 - the previous owner had had issues with media centre - hope NPVR is kinder to it!

You mention waking from standby - does your MPC sleep between recordings?

cool. £70 sounds like a good deal to me and there is no reason why you should have any problems.

absolutely. I have windows power management set to put the pc to sleep after 30mins of idle activity. It wakes up to record programs (npvr adds a wake up even to the bios) and goes to sleep when idle. I think npvr also has some login to send "stay awake" signals to the pc when a recording is imminent. It never misses a recording. I think there are many folks here that do the same and probably some that leave it running 24x7.

[martint123]

Main main server goes to sleep at 10 minutes of inactivity during the day, 30 minutes in the evening.
PC client, tablet and NMT's send wakup packets and it all seems to work well. Sadly it looks like teh Samsung TV hardware/firmware doesn't support sending WOL packets.

[Kiwi]

Can consider TBS 6281 (dual tuner) or TBS 6285 (quad tuner) depending on your needs.

[haverer2]

I use a 290e nanostick too.... in fact I use 2 of them ... absolutely amazing! Never had a problem with them and handy as I can take them with me easily when away/cam,ping and using a laptop (perhaps that should be glamping!!!!!)