New toy (yes, another one)

[Sazar]

Just purchased a new TV tuner, a lovely Hauppauge dual-tuner jobbie, plus a high-gain high-def over the air receiver to plug into the high-def thinger on it

Will be installing it a little later tonight coz my gpu is @ 95% folded and my cpu is at 93% and the last 3 times I've done ANYTHING with my system, the bastids posted for 0 points total.

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_hvr1600.html

Comes with a lovely remote and I'm going to be using the media center features of Vista Ultimate to run the bastid. Supposed to be fully qualified for Vista Premium and above so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[ShepsCrook]

I have a separate media center box. Love the features.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Congrats dude I just purchased this

http://www.sharpusa.com/products/ModelLanding/0,1058,1798,00.html

 

[Sazar]

Setup was a breeze and it works pretty well with the media center edition in Vista Ultimate

Plug and play rocks

Going to check out the HDTV over the air reception tomorrow, once I clean up a corner of the window sill for the receiver.

 

[Admiral Michael]

Congrats dude I just purchased this

http://www.sharpusa.com/products/ModelLanding/0,1058,1798,00.html

We sell those at work and they are a great TV. They sell fast.

 

[Sazar]

Running Joost and media center at the same time.

Also, running F@H cpu and gpu client.

Processor usage can be seen in the gadget (I totally forget I was only using the single core jobbie , but both cores were using about the same amount of usage).

Picture quality on terrestrial cable is quite excellent. Going to use the HDTV setup soon.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

We sell those at work and they are a great TV. They sell fast.

Yes they are in the 32inch model it is one of the best TV's on the market , the store I bought from gets 200 at a time and the next 200 are reserved ! mine will be in the batch after that one ... 2 weeks but thats fine with me .

 

[LeeJend]

Nice. Let us know how good the recording quality is and if they have any annoying Digital Protection built in.

Now the embarassing question. You have the 1600. How is the 1600 MC version diferent? I assume MC stands for media center and I can see an additional (3rd) coax into the top Tuner module but the website does not say anything about what it's for.

PS What about some pic's and links of the high gain receiver. Is it just an amplifier or is it required for high def over the air reception.

 

[Sazar]

Nice. Let us know how good the recording quality is and if they have any annoying Digital Protection built in.

Recording quality is EXCELLENT

Even better is the fact that cpu over-head is at a minimum.

Now the embarassing question. You have the 1600. How is the 1600 MC version diferent? I assume MC stands for media center and I can see an additional (3rd) coax into the top Tuner module but the website does not say anything about what it's for.

There are a few different versions. The remote is allegedly different, although my remote is a MCE remote so I dunno. There is another version out there which is for european users and one more which can work for something else that I didn't care to find out about

PS What about some pic's and links of the high gain receiver. Is it just an amplifier or is it required for high def over the air reception.

I got an RCA jobbie that was a powered antennae coz the high-gain wasn't working that well.

This is basically a powered antennae and does what its supposed to. Much better reception when I switch it to powered v/s just a basic thingy.

 

[dreamliner77]

I want one!

 

[Grandmaster]

/me hates Sazar.

 

[vertigo]

quality should be perfect with digital tuners since it's more or less just demuxing and muxing ts (or ps) streams, not much work needed from the cpu since it's a lossless dump.

i've had mine for about 4 years now.

 

[Sazar]

Well, this is over the air. However the picture quality is pretty amazing. My all in wonder tuners before looked good. This looks GREAT !!!

 

[ElementalDragon]

i've wanted a TV tuner for some time now.... but the last one i had didn't have anywhere near a nice resolution, so it was like watching a really crappy rip of the show i was watching. lol.

Just purchased an AMD X2 6000+ though. should probably have it tomorrow. can't wait to get that puppy installed.

does look like a nice tuner though. how much did that run ya?

 

[X-Istence]

Nice. Let us know how good the recording quality is and if they have any annoying Digital Protection built in.

Now the embarassing question. You have the 1600. How is the 1600 MC version diferent? I assume MC stands for media center and I can see an additional (3rd) coax into the top Tuner module but the website does not say anything about what it's for.

PS What about some pic's and links of the high gain receiver. Is it just an amplifier or is it required for high def over the air reception.

The third Coax is probably for FM tuning. I have a http://www.eskapelabs.com/myTVPVR.html which is the white version of the one Hauppage also makes for Windows http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvrusb2.html . It works extremely well . I got it at CompUSA when they were going out of business, and having a 90% off sale, so I picked it up for $40, about 70% below retail.

 

[vertigo]

However the picture quality is pretty amazing. My all in wonder tuners before looked good. This looks GREAT !!!

then your all-in-wonder was analogue. there is no difference in audio or video quality (only signal strength, which isn't all that important unless you live in a remote area) at all in different brands or makes of digital tuner cards, the bitstreams are bit identical.

with analogue tuners, like the one x-istence linked to, quality varies a lot.

 

[X-Istence]

Mine is USB, which does not help, however the MPEG2 encoding is done on the device itself and not my CPU, so that really does help as well .

 

[vertigo]

correct, the cpu load is kept to a minimum. however, two factors are different that largely affect quality. the analogue card only receives an analogue signal, which is only 4:3, can experience ghosting and interference easily and depends largely on quality and placement of antennae. then there is the problem of having to encode the video and audio streams, which needs fast and cheap encoders, thus requiring higher bitrates, but still low quality.

digital cards receive a digital signal. quality is perfect, you either get perfect quality or you don't get anything at all, there is no middle ground (well technically, there is some very narrow middle ground). no encoding is needed, the bitstream and thus the resolution and quality remains intact. you get widescreen picture and dolby ac3 audio (depending on your broadcaster, mp2 and dts may be available)

there is a world of difference between the two, depending on where you live, it can be much the same as comparing HD DVD/Blu-ray to VHS. or at LEAST DVD to VHS.

 

[Sazar]

then your all-in-wonder was analogue. there is no difference in audio or video quality (only signal strength, which isn't all that important unless you live in a remote area) at all in different brands or makes of digital tuner cards, the bitstreams are bit identical.

with analogue tuners, like the one x-istence linked to, quality varies a lot.

Correct, BUT different tuners do filtering in different ways. The filtering is what makes the quality of the image look better or worse and this is why I only buy ati (amd) or hauppauge products

 

[vertigo]

that's only true for analogue cards. with digital cards, a dirt cheap model will have exactly the same output as the top of the line model. the only difference is the quality of the parts, warranty, other unrelated features and driver support. most cards have bda drivers so work well with a variety of software.