Which dual TV tuner card to buy.

[Sputnik]

It seems the reason for my regular 'tuner not available' error messages is because one of the tuners in my Compro e700 is defective.

I was just wondering what the best card is to buy these days. I will be using it just with windows media centre.

[Ross1]

I would just get a blackgold BGT3620. dual dvb-t2, works great.

If you really dont want HD I have a spare hauppauge nova-t500 that I could probably sell for cheap.

[Chluz]

I would just get a blackgold BGT3620. dual dvb-t2, works great.
.

I've got one of those, and I use it all the time. No problems whatsoever,

[sherpa]

Hi
if you are looking for a cheap duel tuner digital card, i used a peak duel tuner in my first htpc build i done at xmas and was only £26 on ebay and works great for the price. i live in a bad area for a tv signal and it managed to pick up every digy channel no problem

[Funkstar]

Now only £21 from Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Peak-DVB-T-C...8425994&sr=8-2

I've heard really good reports about these cards, they are excellent value and work very well.

[Sputnik]

Just ordered a peak one. At that price was tempted to order 2.

[Sputnik]

I've fitted the Peak card, Pretty impressed for a very cheap card. I get a tiny bit of pixelation but, not for long.

This has got me thinking if the fault with the Compro card was a faulty card it just a poor connection on the PCI-e socket.

Furthermore, I've noticed that there are now windows 7 drivers for the nebula cards to use nebula's digiTV software.

Anyone using Media portal and what is it like? I used to use Nebula's digiTV software until I changed to windows 7 and they didn't make drivers for Win7 64bit. So I changed the card and have been using WMC since.

[Funkstar]

MediaPortal is a very powerful and flexible system, although it can be a pain to set up and get exactly as you want.

There is a good selection of skins and plugins, MovingPictures and MyTVSeries being the two most popular. Many people use it jsut for stored media, without any TV viewing/recording.

[Chluz]

I'm using mediaportal as well. I love it ! . there are not as many plugins as XBMC, or as many functions, but it does everything I want it to do, and its simple to navigate (even my 70 year old grandmother manages)

[Sputnik]

I've noticed that when I open Skype, I get some pixelation on the TV picture with this peak card.

[amythompson172]

I've got one of those, and I use it all the time. No problems whatsoever,

I also use this tuner, and it hasnt given mean issues for 2 years, works great.

[Funkstar]

I've noticed that when I open Skype, I get some pixelation on the TV picture with this peak card.

Have you experienced the same issue with any other cards?

I wonder if Skype is hogging a lot of system resources on startup which is then causing the MPEG-2 decoder on whatever player you are using to drop priority, thus causing the pixelation.

Just a thought.

[Ross1]

That does sounds pretty odd. neither mpeg2 decoding or skype should take up that many cpu cycles. Assuming its the phenom X3 720BE.... that should be able to handle a lot, I had one myself.

Wifi shouldnt interfere with your tv broadcast. While UHF goes up to 3Ghz, I think tv only uses up to channel 69, which is around 850Mhz. IEEE 802.11 of course starts at 2.4Ghz.

[Sputnik]

Have you experienced the same issue with any other cards?

I don't remember it being like it with the old Compro card or the nebula before that but, I can't be 100% sure.

I wonder if Skype is hogging a lot of system resources on startup which is then causing the MPEG-2 decoder on whatever player you are using to drop priority, thus causing the pixelation.

Just a thought.

I was thinking along those lines. I'm using Windows Media Centre still at the moment.