Recommend TV Tuner for Win-MC?

I have the Ceton infiniTV 4. Setup was dead simple, can record/view up to 4 selections at a time (well, watch 1 at a time unless you have an extender, record 3). My picture quality is nearly indistinguishable from the DVR provided to me by my cable service. No matter what, you'll need a CableCARD and possibly a tuning adapter to get unencrypted channels.

Of the 2 you posted, the DCR-2650 is the only one that supports the CableCARD, it is a dual tuner, where mine is a quad. The HVR-2250 is an internal card that plugs into a PCI-e slot, where the DCR-2650 uses a USB connection. If it were me, I'd MUCH rather an internal device but using that one you're limited to channels broadcast "in the clear".

MissSherlock said:

Looks like I'm back to Hauppage HVR-2250 unless you have others you can recommend.

The HVR-2250 is an OTA/ATSC tuner, also capable of recording clear-QAM (i.e. copy-freely) from your cable provider.

But it is not capable of receiving copy-once (i.e. "copy protected" from WMC's perspective) content which requires a cablecard. So if your cable provider's delivery is largely/mostly copy-protected content the HVR-2250 isn't going to be of any more value than to record the copy-freely network channels.

I live in the US, and I have BOTH (a) HVR-2250 connected to my roof antenna for OTA/ATSC 2-tuner capability, and (b) Ceton InfiniTV cablecard-enabled for 4-tuner cable programming WMC recording of both copy-freely and copy-protected content. I use the HVR-2250 for all network channels because TWC/LA re-compresses those same OTA/ATSC channels which they deliver via the cable system. So the original true OTA/ATSC recordings from the roof antenna provide superior video quality than via TWC/LA.

a couple members from Canada over here View topic - Ceton InfiniTV 4 - Owner's Thread One of them, STC has a Ceton setup. Wonder how he got around the CableCard/Rogers problem