AVerMedia AVerTV Duo Hybrid or a Hauppauge WinTV HVR 2200 TV Tuners which to get.

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Nety

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#29979 25-Jan-2009 12:14

Which is better?

I currently have two HVR-3000 cards with DVB-S freeveiw. I also have one setup to capture analogue TV from the Telstra Digital STB but as it is using software to decode it looks like crap and has a very high CPU overhead.

I am looking at either a AVerMedia AVerTV Duo Hybrid or a Hauppauge WinTV HVR 2200 TV Tuner.

At first I will only be using it for analogue capture from the Telstra STB but once Windows 7 comes out I will look at using it for DVB-T duties.

It seems really hard to get good information on the hardware decoding of these cards. The AVerMedia seems especially hard to get info on.

Can those that have them please give some feedback on how they work for you. Analogue is of particular interest to me as that is the primary reason to get these cards.

Media centre PC - Case Silverstone LC16M with 2 X 80mm AcoustiFan DustPROOF, MOBO Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H, CPU AMD X2 240 under volted, RAM 4 Gig DDR3 1033, HDD 120Gig System/512Gig data, Tuners 2 X Hauppauge HVR-3000, 1 X HVR-2200, Video Palit GT 220, Sound Realtek 886A HD (onboard), Optical LiteOn DH-401S Blue-ray using TotalMedia Theatre Power Corsair VX Series, 450W ATX PSU OS Windows 7 x64

sbiddle

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#191957 25-Jan-2009 13:13

IMHO it's pretty hard to go past the Hauppauge cards.

Are you in Wgtn? If you were after a HVR2200 I have one here that don't use - I planned to use it to replace my Nova T 500 but my motherboard had lots of issues with the PCIe card.

RustyGonad

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#192006 25-Jan-2009 19:04

I bought a Avermedia Hybrid Duo over the Xmas break (mainly because the 2200's were out of stock everywhere).

A couple of things to note:

1. The Avermedia Card requires 2 separate RF connections for each tuner. ie you need 2 separate RF aerial cables.
2. The driver support for the Avermedia card under Windows 7 is currently marginal to say the least. I only tried the card under Windows 7, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't appear at all as a device.
3. While it did work it seemed to have serious signal issues with the second tuner. This may have been UHF aerial related, but I certainly haven't had any issues with the HVR2200 using the same plug.

I tried two separate cards thinking it may have been hardware related.

I ended up taking it back and getting hold of a HVR2200. This worked as expected out of the box, no driver issues whatsoever under Windows 7. It also only needs 1 RF plug.

I don't/didn't use analog on either card, so can't comment much on that, however the Hauppauge cards which had analog hardware encoding have all tended to be "good" considering its an analog signal ie the PVR150 was/is miles ahead of the software encoding of the HVR3000 which is marginal to say the least.

The best bet with analog is to get rid of it all together... :)

Cheers,

Nety

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#192024 25-Jan-2009 21:29

RustyGonad:

The best bet with analog is to get rid of it all together... :)

Thanks for the info Rusty, I am going to give sbiddle's card a go and go from there.

I agree about the analogue but it has been a sticking point since we got rid of the DVD recorder. "How come we could record off Telstra before with the DVD recorder but now with the fancy media centre we can't!"

We dont use it often as almost everything we want to record is on 1,2 or 3 anyway but when the family can't when they do want to my name is mud

+ this will give me more tuners for freeview once I do go Windows 7.

mjward

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#192080 26-Jan-2009 09:57

Just to add my 2 cents...

I also bought the same AverMedia card and eventually ended up sending it back and getting the Hauppuage HVR2200 instead (as recommended in this thread http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=83&TopicId=29569).

I'm quite happy with the HVR2200 - was much easier to get going and supported by all the software I tried.

I was initially impressed by the price and features of the AverMedia, but I was unable to get it going in anything other than the supplied software (which I guess is ok if you only want to watch it through your computer). Note it doesn't support hardware acceleration though. Others have said they got it going in apps like GB-PVR and DVBViewer, but IMHO it just wasn't worth the hassle...

Btw I don't use analog either but I did tune it in just for kicks. Worked like a charm.

Michael