I am looking to add a hardware encoding card to my HTPC setup for sky tv. I currently have the Hauppauge HVR 4000 and am unable to get a good picture out of sky (using standard RG59 out of the sky box to card - because the sky box is so far away from the HTPC composite/ s-video is impractical) All i get is jittery stuttering picture using MP and WinTv and Cyberlink. I am getting the impression this is due to the cards lack of hardware encoding for analogue tv.

So for my new card i am looking at a HVR 2200, i would get a PVR 150 MCE but have no spare PCI slots so will need a PCI-E model. Also the HVR 2200 has dual DTT tuners which will come in very useful with the launch of freeview HD!

My question being how to get an IR blaster for this card? I understand the PVR 150 comes with one but not the HVR 2200.

Also how long would the cable be for the IR blaster?
ie. how close would the sky box need to be to the HTPC to get it to work?