DVB-T Tuner cards and Freeview HD

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mjward

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Topic # 29569 12-Jan-2009 09:58

Hi,

Sorry if this is a Noob question that I suspect has been asked before (but haven't been able to find in the forums!).

I've been looking at the many TV Tuner cards available with the intention of recieving NZ Freeview HD on my PC. Very few of the cards specifically say they support High-Def DVB-T signals, which makes me wonder:

If a TV Tuner card receives DVB-T, does that simply mean it will receive the NZ HD signal, but it's up to the PC software/hardware to decode in HD?

Or does the card I purchase have to specifically support DVB-T in HD??

The card I'm considering is the Hauppauge HVR3000. Problem is the specs don't mention anything about supporting HD content, so would like some confirmation.

Thanks
Michael

sbiddle

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Reply # 188922 12-Jan-2009 10:23

Virtually any card that supports DVB-T will work with Freeview|HD to receive HD content.

The decoding is all done by the PC itself, the card just pases through a MPEG TS (transport stream) to the PC.

Just be aware of the hardware & software requirements - a video card capable of H.264 hardware acceleration, a H.264 codec (PowerDVD8) and appropiate TV software such as GB-PVR, DVBViewer or Media Portal.

mjward

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Reply # 188924 12-Jan-2009 10:40

Thanks for the confirmation, that's what I suspected! Amazing that I couldn't find any doco anywhere specifically saying that, I would have thought the nz TV Tuner suppliers would be keen to include 'supports Freeview NZ HD' as a feature for their products!

I see you use the HVR3000. Would you recommend it?

sbiddle

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Reply # 188931 12-Jan-2009 11:14

mjward: Thanks for the confirmation, that's what I suspected! Amazing that I couldn't find any doco anywhere specifically saying that, I would have thought the nz TV Tuner suppliers would be keen to include 'supports Freeview NZ HD' as a feature for their products!

I see you use the HVR3000. Would you recommend it?

A 3000 is really only of use if you want to use DVB-S as well. The Nova T 500 and HVR2200 are both dual tuner terrestrial cards that are both (from memory) cheaper than the HVR3000.

Many tuners are now coming with stickers claiming they work with Freeview|HD. The problem is most of software apps that come with these are particularly poor and often don't support H.264 hardware acceleration.

allstarnz

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Reply # 188932 12-Jan-2009 11:17

the HVR3000 runs fine with Freeview|HD, as long as the rest of your hardware matches up with the requirements.

mjward

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Reply # 188937 12-Jan-2009 11:32

Ok thanks for that, will look at the NOVA instead. I'm not anticipating any problems with the rest of my hardware - Core2 Duo 3GHz, with an NVidia 8600GTS video card.

Again, thanks for the quick responses!

sbiddle

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Reply # 188938 12-Jan-2009 11:36

The HVR2200 is a newer card than the Nova T 500 and has slightly faster channel changes. It's also PCIe rather than PCI.

Ingram are showing negative stock levels again on the HVR2200 and this card has been in very short supply since it's launch earlier last year. NZ apparently gets nowhere near the levels of stock that they order.

pcrosley

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Reply # 188941 12-Jan-2009 11:49

sbiddle: The HVR2200 is a newer card than the Nova T 500 and has slightly faster channel changes. It's also PCIe rather than PCI.

Ingram are showing negative stock levels again on the HVR2200 and this card has been in very short supply since it's launch earlier last year. NZ apparently gets nowhere near the levels of stock that they order.

Try ComputerLounge http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=6358

Great service, free delivery.

mjward

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Reply # 188949 12-Jan-2009 12:28

Wow it always pays to ask huh! Faster channel switching sounds good, I setup an HVR4000 in my old man's PC, was surprised at how slow that was to change channels.

Incidentally - last week I purchased an AVerMedia AVerTV Duo Hybrid PCI-E card, which I sent back after I was unable to get it going in anything other than the provided software (tried MediaPortal, GB-PVR, MeediOS, DVBViewer). Unfortunately the supplied AverTV software was crap and didn't support H.264 hardware offloading so watching the HD Freeview channels consumed 60-70% cpu. Also crashed often, even on a clean Vista x64 install. The impressive list of features for the low cost was tempting, should have stuck to Hauppauge though!

So how well is the Hauppauge HVR 2200 supported by the likes of MediaPortal? It's not listed in the MediaPortal supported cards list (http://www.team-mediaportal.com/manual/Supported_TVCards/DVBt), so is anyone currently running it with MediaPortal or GB-PVR? If not, what software are you running?

Michael

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Reply # 188973 12-Jan-2009 13:50

The Hauppauge HVR2200 works fine with any TV software including Media Portal, GB-PVR or DVBViewer and is what a lot of people on here are using.

As for the Avermedia card getting that working in 3rd party software is just a matter of finding the names of the BDA drivers and adding them to the config file. Programs such as GB-PVR and Media Portal add new cards continually and and any card that has compliant BDA drivers should work fine. I've added a couple of the Avermedia cards to GB-PVR and they work fine for digital but there won't necessarily be any hybrid (analogue) support with anything but the original software.

mjward

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Reply # 189049 12-Jan-2009 17:57

Yeah I did try adding it manually to GB-PVR but didn't have much luck. In the end I decided the hassle wasn't worth it and I was better off sending it back and going for a card that I was confident would work (ie Hauppauge!).

mjward

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Reply # 190975 21-Jan-2009 09:53

Hi - just as an update, I got the Hauppauge HVR-2200 card last week. I got it from here in the end, cheaper by about $50 than other vendors, and arrived quickly: http://www.dtconline.co.nz/.

Was a dream to install and setup after the AverMedia! The card itself is working great, now battling with getting the recorded video to play in Windows Media Centre so that I can watch them on my XBox 360, but that's another story...