Looking at building a htpc - considered it a while ago but work got frantic so I took the easy path and bough a Sony system instead. Have spent the past couple of weeks reading websites but many are overseas, so I'm still a little confused about what sort of tuner I'll need to get Sky Digital - dvb-s, dvb-t or analogue? A couple of sites have suggested analogue, but it seems dvb tuners are becoming increasingly common in stores. Any thoughts?
If you want to use the Sky STB then it will need to be analogue.
If you want to go direct to the HTPC then you'll need a DVB-S card for SD or DVB-S2 card for HD. Of course with the direct method you'll also need a phoenix card reader and a valid sky subscription which will therefore mean a redundant sky provided STB anyway, but I must say the quality is nice.
Just make sure the analogue card has hardware encoding.
Something like a HVR 1700 would do it. Also keep in mind that the STB has to be switched to the channel you are recording so you cant watch something else at the same time. Unless of course you get a duel tuner card with Analogue and DVB-S. Then you could record sky and watch freeview. Not sure what cards will give you that with hardware encoding.
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
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