[mythtv-users] Tuner cards that do HD?

Geoff Mishkin gmishkin at acs.bu.edu
Mon Apr 16 17:00:29 UTC 2007


My anecdotal evidence is better than your anecdotal evidence :-)

No, this does have all the signs of a problem with interacting with
other hardware.  But, I've had my HD-3000 in two different computers,
and connected to four different cable systems plus OTA systems in two
different regions.  No problems.  So the OP shouldn't count it out just yet.

My CPU load when recording analog is between 5% and 7%, which hardly
seems exceptional.  It still records fine even if the rest of the system
is under load.  The biggest disadvantage in my opinion is the fact that
recordings are larger.  But, disk space is cheap, and there's always
transcoding.

For reference: http://amsa.info/hardware.xhtml

             --Geoff Mishkin <gmishkin at bu.edu>


Rod Smith wrote:
> On Monday 16 April 2007 02:02, Geoff Mishkin wrote:
>   
>> I use the pcHDTV HD-3000 which I highly recommend.
>>     
>
> I couldn't disagree more, particularly for digital cable use. I've got two 
> pcHDTV 3000s, and neither can reliably tune a digital cable (QAM) signal. At 
> best, they work for about half an hour when the computer is first turned on, 
> but then they begin glitching out, until the signal is so degraded it's 
> unwatchable by an hour or so in. By "unwatchable," by the way, I don't 
> mean "an annoying video glitch every few seconds;" I mean "the signal is so 
> bad that you're lucky to get a second or two of clear audio and video every 
> minute, with artifacts so bad you can't make out what's on the screen for the 
> rest of the time, and MythTV reports a 1-hour recording is actually 25 
> minutes long." I've replaced one of these cards with an AVerMedia AVerTVHD 
> A180, which produces clean digital recordings, although it doesn't have an 
> NTSC tuner.
>
> This is a known problem with the pcHDTV 3000, but it interacts with other 
> hardware in the computer, so some people encounter it but others don't. I've 
> tried swapping quite a few components, and I've tried my cards in two 
> different computers, with no luck.
>
> For the OP's purposes, too, the pcHDTV 3000 (and I believe the 5500) use 
> framegrabber analog tuners, which increases the CPU load when recording 
> analog signals. IMHO, it's better to go with two tuner cards, one analog and 
> one digital (or more if you want more than that).
>
>   
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