DVB Tuner Card?

[Jonny M]

I want to receive Freeview on my PC, so I'm going to need a DVB tuner card for it.

A lot of time will be spent watching it, but probably the main use will be for recording to a hard drive, so a good programme guide software and powerful encoder to get the video on the drive without dropping frames is essential.

What are my options?

Thanks

[Stoo]

Hauppauge WinTV Nova series off the top of my head..

[IceWebb]

Technisat Skystar 2 DVB card excellent card.....low price

[Lexeus]

Whats a low price ?
thre is one on ebay for £80 inc P&P

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...&category=3761

[Lexeus]

or £100 for the USB version here

http://www.ecscards.co.uk/itm00062.htm

[Gunbuster]

Check out www.tv-cards.com its a good community site.

Stoo: most people seem to think poorly of that on the tv-card.com forum
Malteez: thats DVB-S satellite card not a DVB-T Freeview/terrestrial card
Lexues: like Malteez thats a satellite card not a freeview card.

Nebula Electronics currently provide one of the best (if not the best) cards http://www.nebula-electronics.com/
Black Gold also do one, but its not supposed to be so good, Kustom PCs sell it as well as the Nebula PCI.

[IceWebb]

You are right...that is a DVB-S card.

I bought the card for 54 Euro from Germany.....that's a low price!!

[Stoo]

Check out www.tv-cards.com its a good community site.

Stoo: most people seem to think poorly of that on the tv-card.com forum
Malteez: thats DVB-S satellite card not a DVB-T Freeview/terrestrial card
Lexues: like Malteez thats a satellite card not a freeview card.

Nebula Electronics currently provide one of the best (if not the best) cards http://www.nebula-electronics.com/
Black Gold also do one, but its not supposed to be so good, Kustom PCs sell it as well as the Nebula PCI.

It's probably driver issues on the Hauppauge, I couldn't find much else when I had a google.. That Nebula DigiTV looks pretty good, but it's £50 more than the Hauppauge, up to Caged on how much he wants to spend really..

[skattrd]

The Nebula is the most expensive and the best.

The Hauppauge nova-t has a few issues - I gave up on mine a while ago, I'll give it a bash again shortly. Apparently Hauppauge don't write the software, but terchnotrend do, I'll try using their software this time.

[Atomic]

Nebula Electronics currently provide one of the best (if not the best) cards http://www.nebula-electronics.com/
Black Gold also do one, but its not supposed to be so good, Kustom PCs sell it as well as the Nebula PCI.

If your budget will stretch to the nebula go for it, such a nice card and the picture is second to none.

[skattrd]

Ok, just got my nova-t working, its ok tbh, but won't work atm with hauppauge software, however works with 3rd party software instead (showshifter). I'm currently trying to sort out the hauppauge software with the help of their tech support, who replied to my email within 2hrs

[3dcandy]

Surely you don't need to encode a dvb stream as it's MPEG2 already?

Or did I miss something.....I always believed you could just record the stream directly to hard drive and use it to burn to dvd for exactly the same quality!?!?

[Gunbuster]

Surely you don't need to encode a dvb stream as it's MPEG2 already?

Or did I miss something.....I always believed you could just record the stream directly to hard drive and use it to burn to dvd for exactly the same quality!?!?

True, a good DVB card will send the stream to your pc unchanged, but I believe DVDs are MPEG4? so it will have to be changed to that format as it uses different audio and video codecs.

[3dcandy]

Nah mate, dvd's are MPEG2 - 720 x 576
Encoded enough stuff to burn using my trusty DVR-104 to know that much....
You may have to do some stuff to get a stream onto dvd but it should be dead easy!

[Gunbuster]

Nah mate, dvd's are MPEG2 - 720 x 576
Encoded enough stuff to burn using my trusty DVR-104 to know that much....
You may have to do some stuff to get a stream onto dvd but it should be dead easy!

Thanks I didn't know that.

[Allen]

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...3686&GroupID=0

I know people have slated it, but I heard it's very good. Only £68.15 too...