MickeyM

Hi,

I am after some advice. I am looking for a DVB-T card for my PC, and have been confused by the huge range etc...

Can anyone recommend a good card? Ideally I am looking for the following features:

DVB-T Decoding
Easy to use software to record and write to DVD-R/CDR
Possibly to have an Analogue TV input too (To copy vide tapes onto DVD - the wife wants this for the wedding video!!)
Ideally, have an output which can be connected to our digital TV (Scart/RGB, S-VIDEO etc..)
Nicam stereo (better if possible)
Digital teletext

Any advice of a great setup/combination would be appreciated.

Mike

GC8

Youll probably need two seperate cards to do all of that. A Hauppauge WinTV Nova will be able to handle everything except capturing analogue video. Because DVB uses MPEG2 compression the Nova and other DVB TV cards dont have/need hardware MPEG2 compression; they simply write the data to disk on the fly. In order to capture analogue video (properly) you will need a card which incorporates hardware encoding, the cheapest Hauppauge card Im aware of is the WinTV PVR 150 at about £50; the Nova costs between £60 and £80 depending where you buy.

Simon

David_Wallis

When I was looking for media centre, the hauppage cards and the black gold cards seemed the most popular.

David

MickeyM

Thanks for the advice - I was looking at the Hauppage - but when you search for reviews they seem to get bad press. David - are you using one OK? I guess it could just be a few discruntled kids on the review pages.

Cheers,

Mike

jowl

I'm currently building a (test) media centre PC.

I haven't decided on my TV card yet put I'm tempted by this nebula card. It's expensive compared to the others (you can get 2 blackgold cards for that price) but it does have video-in.

But the TV viewing and recording software is supposed to be the best there is bar none. This is why I'll probably go for it (and it has Antenna pass through)

However, I'm probably going to run Media Portal - free software that is basically like Microsoft's MCE.

But it seems the nebula card might take a bit more effort in the setup for this.

David_Wallis

im running a pvr500mce I like it. Does everything I need.

Just wish I could have a DVB-T card as well as the pvr500 and have MCE support it.

David

bigsinky

i am running a skystar 1 card with progdvb atm. using plugins for the 1.5m dish on a H2H-120 mount. works a treat. using plugins now for most encryptions as gold cards are just not fast enough now.

GC8

The cards are excellent; its the software thats ****e.

Simon