Best HD (or dual) capture Card ?
Submitted by MarkW on December 29, 2008 - 5:09am
I'm building a 1U frontend (Hipermedia).
The box can only fit one (1) card, any recommendations ?
I like the pcHDTV-5500 because of the NO braodcast flag,
or a dual tuner live the HVR-1600 (if there are drivers that work).
Notes.
This is an all in one system (FE & BE), and is connected to Comcast.
I also plan on using Firewire as a second "tuner".
Thank You
Mark
I have 3x HDHomeRun and I
I have 3x HDHomeRun and I LOVE them! They work great with multiple sources ie: Off Air mixed with cable.
HD Homerun
The HD Homerun works great, BUT only the FREE OTA cable channels seem to get through Mythtv. Still looking for a work around to get at least the channels I paid for. I know it is there due to MS box can see the other channels.
HD Tuners
I have both an HD Homerun box and a pcHDTV 5500. Both work very well for high def, but between the two I prefer the HD Homerun since it's an external box that does not eat up my precious PCI slots.
Any HD tuner will only receive over-the-air broadcasts, or unencrypted digital cable channels. Your milage may vary, but most cable companies transmit the broadcast networks in the clear, and some have additional channels as well. Do a channel scan and see what you see. You may have to scan multiple times if you don't see any stations, or they show up with weird identifiers. Try all the combinations of channel separator until you get it to at least show the station identifiers. (I still had to manually edit the channel NUMBERS...)
MarkW wrote: I'm building
I'm building a 1U frontend (Hipermedia).
The box can only fit one (1) card, any recommendations ?
I like the pcHDTV-5500 because of the NO braodcast flag,
or a dual tuner live the HVR-1600 (if there are drivers that work).
Notes.
This is an all in one system (FE & BE), and is connected to Comcast.
I also plan on using Firewire as a second "tuner".
Thank You
Mark
The pcHDTV-5500 works well for me (aside from one of mine dieing after 2 years of use), but I'm not sure I'd pick it again at this point as it's pretty long in the tooth. I'm not sure if there's anything substantially better out there as the 5500 is pretty solid. The broadcast flag is a non-issue; linux-primary driver support for the card is nice. I think isley et. al. have good support for the newish Hauppauge USB HVR 1950 devices, and he's very active in driver development which is great.
HD Homerun
My favorite is the HD Homerun with dual digital tuners. Since it tunes in the station and then streams the signal to your computer, you can put it anywhere on your home network and it doesn't take up a card slot. Plus, it has an IR input for your remote that also connects to your server over the network.
See my posting earlier this year for more info:
http://www.mythdora.com/?q=node/3940
A Huge Ditto for the HDHomeRun!!!
I just got my hands on one of these little wonders and I am not sure how I lived without it!
Truly the best solution in my book!