Dual tuner HD card?

[Archer75]

I'm looking for a tuner card for my HTPC.

I want to use it for recording and watching OTA HD via my antenna and i'm trying to find one that hopefully has 2 tuners on a single card so that I can record two programs at once and works with Vista Media Center.

I have had a HTPC for several months and use it for watching files I have downloaded and DVD's, HD-DVD's and Blue-Ray that I have stored to the hard drive. And it works great in that regard. Now I just need to record some shows on it.

 

[JC634]

I've been using this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100014 for a couple of months now. It is PCIe-1x. Drivers work very well with Vista x64. They also have BETA drivers that allow you to watch unencrypted QAM from your cable feed.

 

[Archer75]

I've been reading about that card and it seems it will only record HDTV on one of the tuners and analog on the other tuner? Is this true?

 

[JC634]

Yes, that is because one is analog and one is a digital tuner.

If you are looking for dual HD tuner, I do not believe that there are any. If you cannot find any like that, you would be stuck with buying 2 cards to do what you want.

 

[Archer75]

Hmmm, well what are some good single tuner HD cards? No need to spend all that money on a combo tuner if I only plan on using the HD tuner. And it will have to be PCI. My only PCI-E 1x slot is buried by my video card.

 

[JC634]

Check out the Hauppauge web site. If they don't 'em, probably no one does. Or the Avermedia/ATI/etc. sites.

Use Newegg as a portal to the various vendor sites. If you are using XP, you should not have a problem with whatever you decide on.

If Vista... Be VERY careful that they drivers for a particular card. New HW *should* be fine, older HW will sometimes have flakey drivers, at best.

 

[schizo]

The HDHomerun should do what you want. It's really cool tech, too-- it actually works over the network.

http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomerun

 

[infamous gooch]

What about the Vbox Cat's Eye 164/e? I believe it has dual ATSC HD tuners.

Vbox Cat's Eye 164e

 

[Archer75]

What about the Vbox Cat's Eye 164/e? I believe it has dual ATSC HD tuners.

Vbox Cat's Eye 164e

It looks like it would indeed record 2 HD programs at once. However it's PCI-E 1x and I can't use that slot.

 

[Dutch]

The HDHomerun should do what you want. It's really cool tech, too-- it actually works over the network.

http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomerun

Have you used this before? Do you connect this to a "master" computer that will store and record the shows and then you can queue up and stream content to any computer?