TV Tuner Cards For HTPC Discussion

[Robosapien]

To avoid brokerage fees - Go to the UPS terminal, pick up the paperwork and head over to a Customs & Excise office. They will ask you a few routine questions, charge you PST/GST and rubber stamp everything. Then head back to the UPS terminal and pick up your parcel. Fortunately, in my case, the UPS terminal and the customs bureau are only a few minutes apart.

[slam_to]

Hi All,

Does anyone know of a place in Canada to buy the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-350?

Thanks,
SLam

[MarcP]

Right here

For almost the same price, you can get the PVR-500MCE which has dual-tuner. That's the one I bought.

[slam_to]

Do you know if you can run it on Win2k?

[MarcP]

Dunno.. I use WinXP.

[IronCatt]

From Hauppage website

For 350:

System Requirements

Processor requirements: Pentium® III processor 733MHz or faster, min 128MB RAM and 10GB HDD
Microsoft® Windows® XP/2000/Me/98SE
Free PCI slot
Sound card
CD-RW or DVD writer for burning CD’s or DVD’s (optional)
VGA card (PCI or AGP) with Direct Draw support

For 500:

System Requirements:
Processor requirements: Pentium® IV processor 1.2GHz or faster for TV pause with full screen playback
Windows®XP Media Center Edition 2005, WindowsXP Home or WindowsXP Professional
Note: when using the WinTV-PVR-500 MCE with WindowsXP, you need a third party TV application such as SageTV or BeyondTV
Free PCI slot
Sound card
VGA card (PCI or AGP) with Media Center 2005 certified driver
DVD decoder certified for use with Media Center 2005

[slam_to]

ah... yes... the internet! I should have checked.

Thanks for the info,
SLam

[itzac]

Memory express has both cards for the same price, Dangeo has just the 500 for a little cheaper (very little). The question to you is do you need the decoder on the 350 or do you have a video card with a built-in decoder? Most modern ATI and Nvidia AGP and PCI-express cards will have a built-in mpeg decoder.

[mcopelan]

Originally Posted by itzac

Memory express has both cards for the same price, Dangeo has just the 500 for a little cheaper (very little). The question to you is do you need the decoder on the 350 or do you have a video card with a built-in decoder? Most modern ATI and Nvidia AGP and PCI-express cards will have a built-in mpeg decoder.

I am looking at TV on a regular TV set using the TV out on my new PVR-350. The sound from the TV seems to be slightly out out of sync with lip movement.
I am driving the TV with the red, white and yellow audio output and composite video output from the PVR-350 card; not listening to the delayed sound from the PCI sound card, so there shoudn't be any loss of sync. What could be the reason?

I am a newby to forums so please excuse any mistakes.

[jacobnut]

I could sure use the ISO - ATI wouldn't help me, and their web store is out of stock. Thanks!

[slam_to]

Hi All,

I just got my WinTV-PRV350 (after a long and hideous experience with FrontierPC, avoid them!). I'm having an odd problem.

The first quirk I've found is that the manual shows that I can select the radio as a source in the WinTV-Scheduler, I would have expected that becuase that's partially what I had heard it could do. Unfortuantely when I load the scheduler, it doesn't show up. Was there something I needed to enable to get the radio as a source, or do I have an old verison of the scheduler?

Actually that brings me to why I'm confused at the moment.

I went to their web page, assuming I had an old driver on the CD. Then I went into head cross-eyed. Has anyone noticed some inconsistencies between their CD, and their web page? Some of the applications/drivers are newer on the CD, some are newer on the web page, some I can't tell (ie. I can't get the version info from the application).


PS: Frontierpc.com took almost 3 weeks to deliver my card even though they said it was in stock and would deliver in 3-5 days

[Marc Flynn]

Update

I've used this cute box over four month. I'd like to say it is real nice!

Its timeshift fuction is very good too.

Its utility program can convert original file to DVD, mpeg2 or Dixv format, works good, very convenience.

It has a simple cut fuction, you can cut out the ads from the recorded file.

Over all, HIGHLY recommended!

[DigPhotoGuru]

I also recently got this product!
The blue underlight is too cool...if you've ever seen one, you'd understand hahaha...

I have used the OTA features, but I've also found that it enables me to record the HD content off my rogers HD box. Unfortunately, the best quality is S-VIDEO...somebody needs to have a tuner with Component input...

I actually emailed Digital Connections and they actually said to check out Sensuz Media here in Toronto.

The price works out to be just a bit cheaper than getting from the US. Plus I don't have to ship it all the way back into the US if I do have problems.

So I ended up getting it from Sensuz Media, also bought my XGENE keyboard from them...

Really glad to see that there is a Canadian company taking interest in the MCE scene. Does anyone know if they have representation on this board? Like someone we can ask questions directly to?

[z0z0]

Hello all. I notice that this has been discussed two years ago but nothing recently. The reason I bring this up is that Daniel Tonks - "Wrangler of Remotes" has been able to watch unencrypted QAM channels using his Sony DHG-HDD500.

See -
http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin...hread.cgi?2531

See -
http://www.digitalhomecanada.com/for...ad.php?t=30834

I wonder if anyone with the DVICO Fusion5 or th MyHD cards which have QAM can get the unencrypted QAM.

Secondary question which I have seen discussed but not answered - which of these two cards are the better card and where in Canada can we buy them? I run MCE on a Pentium 2.8 GHz CPU

Thanks

[57]

I assume you are aware which channels are unencrypted - see the Digital Home FAQ "Can I get Digital Cable". I would have thought that any QAM card that functions properly would work.