Digital TV tuners and PVR cards

[TUS 373]

I am interested in eventually building a media PC for the living room using Windows Media Center Edition as the O/S. In the meantime, I thought I could start going this way by adding a analogue/digital tuner card with PVR facility to my exisiting desktop PC.

I want to keep to using PCI cards rather than external USB devices. Can anyone recommend a suitable device that can provide analogue AND digital (Freeview) tuning, electronuc program guides (without paying subscriptions) and the video recording facility direct to hard disk?

Any other pearls of wisdom that I should consider too?

[randlemarcus]

hmm.
I am a passionate believer in MS, and the vast swathes of cash they throw at human computer interaction research, and the usability of their products. Being a cynical old bu99er, however, I am also a believer in the 3.0 release being the first one to actually come close to what it says on the tin.
My experience with building my own media center box from components would lead me straight to buying a ready made one, if they werent all so damned expensive for a fairly low grade bit of hardware. The OS is a finicky little bugger, and you HAVE to make sure that the components are individually certified for Media Center 2005. Whe it works, its great, mind, and gives you all the bits you asked for.
I use the Twinhan DTV PCI card, but other cards exist. AFAIK, there are no PCI dual DVB-T cards out there right now, but I am open to correction.

Marcus

[timsta]

I used a Hauppage PVR-250 (www.hauppauge.com/), on W2K with Beyond TV (www.snapstream.com/)

Beyond TV is great. If you are already half way through a show and you decide to record it it records the whole show, from the beginning! It will also record from multiple sources, so you can record things that are on different channels at the same time, providing you have access to all the channels, i.e. one on terrestrial and one on cable/sattelite.

Very nice software too, it will also recompress to DivX automatically to save space and even dump it to your portable media player in the correct format.

HTH
Tim

[ErnestM]

Might be easier to buy a ready made unit. I am considering one of these:



Plenty of connection options:


SONY VGX-XL1

VGX-XL1A Contoller
• Processor - Intel® Pentium® D Processor 820 (2.80GHz1, 2MB L2 Cache)
• Front Side Bus Speed - 800MHz1
• Chipset - Intel® 945P
• Memory - 512MB PC2-4200 533MHz DDR2 (Expandable to 2GB)
• Hard Drive - 200GB 7200rpm Serial ATA (RAID Ready)
• Graphics - nVIDIA® GeForce™ 6200 64MB DDR SDRAM dedicated memory (TurboCache™ supporting up to 256MB) x16 PCI Express Graphics
• Video Interface
Output: HDMI™ (High Definition Multimedia Interface)
DVI-D (through HDMI™ to DVI-D adapter)
Component (YPbPr)
Input:
Gold plated Composite and S-Video (Front)
• Optical Drive
CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive
CD-R Write (24x MAX),
CD-RW Write (24x MAX)
DVD-ROM Read (8x MAX),
CD-ROM Read (24x MAX)
• Audio - Sound Reality™ technology with DSD (Direct Stream Digital) support
• Audio Interface
Output:
S/PDIF Optical and Coaxial
Gold Plated LIne Out (Left/Right)
Input:
S/PDIF Optical
Gold Plated Line In (Left/Right/Front/Back)
• TV Tuner
Giga Pocket® MPEG2 Realtime Encoder Board with Composite Video/Audio, S-Video, Coaxial (VHF/UHF) inputs
• Ethernet - 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T Fast Ethernet (RJ-45)
• Expansion Slots
Multi-Media Card Reader
(Memory Stick®, Memory Stick PRO/Duo™, Compact Flash® Type I and Type II, SD/ MultiMediaCard™, SmartMedia, xD Picture Card®
One x16 PCI Express (occupied by Graphics Card)
Two PCI (one available)
• Expansion Bays
Three 3.5" Half-Height (one occupied)
• Port Connectors
Four USB 2.0 ports
Mic In and Headphone Out
i.link® Port5 (6pin x 2 back)
i.link®5 (4 pin x 1 front)
Infrared Transmitter Out x 2

VGP-XL1B - Media changer
Capacity for 200 CD/DVD discs
• Optical Drive
DVD+R Double Layer/DVD±RW2
DVD+R DL Write (4x MAX);
DVD-R Write (16x MAX),
DVD-RW Write (6x MAX);
DVD+R Write (16x MAX),
DVD+RW Write (8x MAX)
CD-R Write (40x MAX),
CD-RW Write (24x MAX)
• Port Connectors
i.link®5 6 pin x 2
• Supplied Accessories
IR Remote Control/IR Blaster (1)
Wireless Keyboard
HDMI™ Cable
i.link®5 Cable
S/PDIF Optical Cable
HDMI-DVI Adapter
Mini DVD Adapter
Wireless Antenna
AA Batteries (6)
Power Cords (2)
• Operating System
Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 with Update Rollup 2

Best bit: Price = $2300 US

More Info: Clicky


ErnestM

[Podie]

I've been running MCE05 for over a year now... cracking bit of kit. MCE isn't quite as finiky as you might believe, but it does depend on how much you are prepared to tinker...

[Plotloss]

Hauppage Win TV Nova T MCE

Might be OEM only though, dunno.

You want it twin headed to watch one station record another.

There are no free program guides as such, Digiguide is the best UK one at the bank breaking sum of £9 a year, massive functionality, great search, a cracking product all in all.

Everything you need to run a Media Centre is available as cards rather than external devices.

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

One thing to note about MCE. You cannot have analogue and digital tuners in the box and get EPG's to work. You can have as many of the same standard as you like, but not both.

I've had a Hush MCE box for a while now and it's great. Anyone want to by my almost un-used DVD recorder off me?....

[Podie]

ThatPhilBrettGuy said:

One thing to note about MCE. You cannot have analogue and digital tuners in the box and get EPG's to work. You can have as many of the same standard as you like, but not both. I've had a Hush MCE box for a while now and it's great. Anyone want to by my almost un-used DVD recorder off me?....

I'd heard on the grapevine that it has been addressed in MCE06... and that there is a hack or two available...

Just installed Rollup 2 and can't see anything different

Oh, and MCE Weather... bloody fantastic...

[docevi1]

is there a pre-built PVR with Media Centre that just works?

I'm wanting to replace all my multimedia equipment in my room with a Media Centre and whilst I was thinking about making one myself out of my older equipment, but to be honest I don't know how sucessful that would be - it'd be too noisy for example. Which is the best (and not in the Sony Price range)?

I'm wanting tv tuning, mp3 serving, videos, DVD's, storage of media / transfer via network, control PVR from web / mobile etc...

[Podie]

docevi1 said:

is there a pre-built PVR with Media Centre that just works? I'm wanting to replace all my multimedia equipment in my room with a Media Centre and whilst I was thinking about making one myself out of my older equipment, but to be honest I don't know how sucessful that would be - it'd be too noisy for example. Which is the best (and not in the Sony Price range)? I'm wanting tv tuning, mp3 serving, videos, DVD's, storage of media / transfer via network, control PVR from web / mobile etc...

PVR is part of MCE.

The Elonex range seem to get rave reviews for the off-the-shelf options...