Single vs Dual vs Quad Tuners

[Voightkampfferror]

Just a general question from a newbie guy. I couldn't find anything in the search but my google kung foo might be weak.

I currently have a hauppauge hvr-2250 dual tuner that refuses to pick up a weak channel in my line up. (UHF 15) if I tune that channel on any of my televisions they pick it up fine but it does occasionally artifact.

my question is, do dual and quad tuners basically have a built in splitter that halves the power? Can I buy another single tuner and run a dedicated line off of my channel master amp to pick up just that channel that is fairly poor (but normally watchable) channel? its the only full HD NBC channel in my region.

[mvallevand]

Have you used your kung fu to look at tvfool to see if the direction is different for NBC? You might need a different antenna orientation. Also if you remove all splits (I read television(s) and the tuner card so you already have at least 3) do things work better? Tuners cards often don't have as good a tuner as in a TV. There is a split but there might be an amplifier to improve it too so my opinion is more splits will degrade the signal. You might even be better off feeding directly to a PVR and dropping the coax feeds to the TV's.

Martin

[Voightkampfferror]

Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate you took the time.

Antenna is directional and pointed directly at the NBC provider. I've verified with tvfool/rabbitears.info and the one tv we have that actually has a SNR meter (however accurate that might actually be) luckily all the other providers that I'm trying to pick up are only about 4 degrees off and they all pick up well. I have the antenna making a pretty short run into a channel master 4 way with about 9db of forward gain per output. The PVR box is directly below it with a 4' run coming off of the channel master. I've heard a ton of grumpy complaints about how our NBC channel has troubles even with people that live in the actual city only a few miles away from the tower. I've heard some people say that the provider might be broadcasting at a lower power level than what they are licensed. I dunno.

I'll definitely try hooking the pvr directly to the antenna to see how that does. with the super low price of used TV cards and how well those old units interface with linux I'll probably pick up a single channel tuner as an experiment and report back to you guys. worse comes to worse there is another broadcaster I pick up very well that rebroadcasts NBC in low def. (womp womp) and I wont get the additional NBC casts but Oh well. hard to complain about free!

[NumberFive]

I've looked at the boards of several dual and quad tuners of different brands, and it's usual that they use a proper amplifier and impedance matched splitter to feed the tuner ICs. Sometimes these come as an IC themselves. The tuner ICs are often identical to those you would get in a TV set, in which case they use a bridge IC to convert to USB/PCI-e or otherwise. Many vendors put all the RF stuff in a metal can, in which case it should be fairly immune to being in or near the electrical noise of a PC. Make sure you use decent coaxial cables though.

All that being said, I have experienced TV sets be more sensitive to marginal signals than many tuner cards (PCI-e, USB, network). The variations between brands and number of tuners is somewhat random. Even some of the unbranded USB sticks are good, if you can get the drivers.

If you find a solution or get any other observations it's always useful to learn what worked for you.