Trying to find a Digital TV Tuner card....

[colinjones]

Having great difficulty finding a card that will fit what I am looking for .... have browsed around a lot and can only find either something that I can't confirm is compatible or doesn't have the features I am looking for! Can someone help please?

Looking for a dual tuner (High Definition) digital TV card for DVB-T (Australia), so that I can record 2 channels at once, or record one and watch another, etc. (ie genuine 2 tuner); hardware encoder - not interested in all the other extra features, as they don't seem relevant for LMCE!

If anyone can make some suggestions I would be greatly appreciative as I really can't get started on building the hardware until I have this sorted...

Also, does anyone know if I were to add a second card (or third) would LMCE be able to handle it as 4 (or 6) channels?

[stevetv]

there isnt a huge amount of duel dvb-t cards available.  I believe DVICO FusionHDTV have one . .and given their single tuner cards work well with mythtv, i presume they would work.  certain check before hand though.

hardware encoder is an interesting request.  digital telly is broadcast is mpeg.. the cards dont really need to encode anything.  hardware encoders exist on high end analog cards like hauppage pvr250 because analog broadcasts DO need to be encoded to mpeg.  one of the benefits of digital broadcast is that it is very light on cpu usage.

what extra features (that you don't want) were you referring to? 

Anyway.. its only a single tuner.. but the Technisat Airstar 2 PCI is a very good digital tuner card.  it's around $AU100.  just get two and your sorted.  they work great with mythtv.

mythtv can handle (pretty much) as many tuner cards as youve got pci slots. 

[totallymaxed]

Having great difficulty finding a card that will fit what I am looking for .... have browsed around a lot and can only find either something that I can't confirm is compatible or doesn't have the features I am looking for! Can someone help please?

Looking for a dual tuner (High Definition) digital TV card for DVB-T (Australia), so that I can record 2 channels at once, or record one and watch another, etc. (ie genuine 2 tuner); hardware encoder - not interested in all the other extra features, as they don't seem relevant for LMCE!

If anyone can make some suggestions I would be greatly appreciative as I really can't get started on building the hardware until I have this sorted...

Also, does anyone know if I were to add a second card (or third) would LMCE be able to handle it as 4 (or 6) channels?

We use Hauppauge Nova-T500 twin tuner DVB-T cards and are very pleased with them. You dont need a hardware encoder card. We use the T-500 in multiple card installations successfully.

[colinjones]

Totallymaxed & Stevetv,

Thanks for the info! Sorry, I should have been more detailed in what I wanted! I realise that DVB-T is already a MPEG TS and so doesn't need an encoder, the vital info I missed was I would also like to be able to capture a third, analogue, stream from a generic composite/svideo in - but I see now that this is a big ask, so I will just go for a separate card for that

I was looking at the Nova T500 originally, but then looked at the specs and it seemed to be saying that it was only an SD card - did I misunderstand? They are both dual tuner AND HD?

The "other" features I didn't want just things like remotes, and stuff related to Windows MCE, etc - just ignore the comment!

[stevetv]

yes the novaT500 is both is HD and SD.  when you scan for channels it will pick up both the hd and sd channel frequencies.  i think hauppauge cards are really over priced though.. but that's just an opinion.. they're certainly very popular. 

Also.. i believe nova-t is only supported by 2.6.19 and later kernels.  im not sure what linuxpvr uses.. surely it's fine though given totallymaxed uses them?  also.. the remote may not be supported?

[Oberg]

Colin,

Have a look at these pages, I'm looking for a suitable card too and I came across these pages which may be helpful to you.

http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~chrisp/Linux-DVB/DVICO/

http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~chrisp/Linux-DVB/DNTV/

Good luck with it.

Oberg.