So I am extremely close to building a PVR. I have the system ready to go, I am just waiting for the extra funds to purchase the tuner cards. I definitely want at least 2 tuner cards, but I have some questions still. After traversing the forums for a few hours the only question I have is, what set-up do people recommend?

Do you recommend high end capture cards or low end capture cards. The way I see it, I can spend $10 a card on Ebay and get 4 cards for cheaper than I can get two from Newegg. So should I spend more money on the nicer card, like a Hauppage? Has anyone noticed a difference in quality? And is the difference worth it?

And lastly... Please post your setup and thoughts. I am interested in hearing what you all think.

Thanks!

Played with few diffrent tuners in diffrent systems.

System 1 PIII 500, 256RAM 80GB, PVR-150 retail
System 2 PIII 933 512RAM 80GB, PVR-150 retail
System 3 AMD 1700 512RAM 80GB, Leadtek Winfast 2000 XP

The PVR-150 produces better quality recording, the recordings sizes are about 1/2 the size of the Leadtek (software based encoding) at around 2GB/hr compared to 4GB/hr.

Both controls are well supported. A lot of your cheaper cards use software encoding and can be hit/miss supported. The above is just the SD realm, there are choices too for HD recording if you want to go that avenue. I looked a good amount for tuner "deals" on ebay the problem is a lot of the cards you have no idea what chipset they use and if they are supported. I setup searches for a known supported software card in Leadtek, but never seen a deal worth the few $$ diffrence that wouldn't warrant just getting another PVR-150.

Your profile doesn't say which country you are in. If you are in a DVB country you can get digital tuners cheaper than decent analog tuners, with much better picture quality.
On the analog side my PVR-150 is much better quality than my Flyvideo3000, which was better than the Winfast 2000XP that I gave up on.


Is US digital tv (ATSC) only for HDTV? DVB in Australia is both SD and HD.

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Paul Turpie
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<--Is your location in your profile? Why not?

Yea I kinda figured that Hauppage had the best quality. From what I had seen it appears that everyone seems to use them. So I guess I could try to find the cheapest Hauppage card and get a couple of em.

Get a Hauppage PVR-500. IIRC, it's cheaper than two PVR-150's an' provides two tuners on one card.

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KM R5E50; K8NGM2; A64-3800+; 1024MB PC3200; LG DVD-RW; Seagate 750GB; 6600 PCI-E; Onboard sound; Hauppauge PVR-150

So if I get one card can I later add another, after I have already set up the box?

Yes. You can keep adding cards until you run out of slots.
After adding a new card you will have to go back into mythtv-setup to add the new card, and match its inputs to the xmltv video-sources.

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Paul Turpie
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<--Is your location in your profile? Why not?

I too am just about to order the tuners for my MythTV box, and I wanted some feedback on what I think I've narrowed it down to. I was going to get 2 cards, both the PVR-150, but one with a remote. The remote version is over 30 bucks more. Is it worth it to do that? Or is there a cheaper option for the remote so I can just get the 2 identical tuners?

Here are the cards I was going to order:
The non-remote PVR-150:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815116633

The remote version:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815116625

I really look forward to having a high quality MythTV box with a remote that uses as little CPU as possible to keep heat lower (I'm paranoid). Thanks for your input.

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Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae.

I guess I should tell why I chose those cards. Obviously I want a remote, but also, from what I've gathered, both of those cards have hardware mpeg2 encoding, which means lower CPU utilization while recording shows or watching live TV. The other thing that I think I've gathered is that they don't require an audio cable to a sound card, which means I can just use one sound card in the box.

Am I correct on all those points? If so, I think this will easily be worth the extra money for higher quality cards. If I'm not correct, I'd like to know before I start ordering!!! Thanks again for any input.

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Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae.

The cost difference is basically the remote. If you look at the PVR150 MCE _kits_ which include a remote they're about the same as the non-MCE cards which come with a remote.