New to NZ, best DVB-S card for freeview / MCE

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Rupee

1 post

Wannabe Geek

# 19630 24-Feb-2008 14:19

Hi,

I have recently returned to NZ after some years in the UK. I have a HTPC already although I will be rebuilding this shortly, using Vista ultimate.

I have a standalone freeview stb at the moment which is working fine, so my dish and LNB are OK. I would like to get DVB-S tv into my HTPC. Its a PCI based 32 bit machine. Im not too bothered about having sky at the moment.

There seem to be a variety of cards available to do this, is there a consensus on which one is the best??

At the moment I am tending towards the Hauppauge Nova-S plus, as it is from a well known company, cheap and easy to get hold of, and there seems to be plenty of info about how to get it to run with MCE...

Alternatives:
Technisat Skystar 2
Twinhan
Technotrend S-1500, seems to be the same as the nova-s plus
Avermedia

Please let me know your experiences with these cards!!

Regards
rupee

peteinakl

22 posts

Geek

# 112684 24-Feb-2008 14:31

I'm using a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR4000, it's priced well, PCI, works seamlessly in MCE/MP and does analogue, DVB-S/S2 and DVB-T (a little future-proofing).

I like it, but there is one caveat: as it's a hybrid card, you can only use one receiver on the card at once. I like Prime, but am getting my EPG from DVB-S I can't use in the analogue receiver; probably not an issue as you've only asked for a DVB-S/S2 card (and most people have multiple capture cards), but something to be aware of :)

RustyGonad

483 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

# 112686 24-Feb-2008 14:49

peteinakl: I'm using a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR4000, it's priced well, PCI, works seamlessly in MCE/MP and does analogue, DVB-S/S2 and DVB-T (a little future-proofing).

I like it, but there is one caveat: as it's a hybrid card, you can only use one receiver on the card at once. I like Prime, but am getting my EPG from DVB-S I can't use in the analogue receiver; probably not an issue as you've only asked for a DVB-S/S2 card (and most people have multiple capture cards), but something to be aware of :)

The analog and digital parts of this card can be used at the same time (got a couple of HVR3000's which are nearly identical apart from DVB-S2). I have recorded Prime on analog while watching digital/DVB-S, using Media Center with a combined guide. There's another thread on it... You can't use DVB-T with DVB-S though.

peteinakl

22 posts

Geek

# 112764 24-Feb-2008 19:24

I've tried this, unsuccessfully, before. I read your posting, which is damn good by the way, and carefully followed your method this afternoon with several versions of the driver and SoftMCE encoder. I can get the card to tune in but, as in the past, the level of instability it introduces is not worth it. This may be specific to my setup, or maybe the HVR400, either way I'll just go with a second decoder once DVB-T is sorted in NZ :)