Recommend TV Tuner for Win-MC?

[MissSherlock]

Hi Folks,

Upgrading to a new computer (old one 7 years old) and would like to watch Cable HD-TV (Rogers Cable Ontario) and record various programmes.

Which TV tuner would members recommend for Media Centre?

What are the differences between Hauppage HVR-2250 vs DCR-2650?


Thanks in advance, ms


Hoping to purchase: ASUS CM-6870-CA-3AB Desktop - Intel i7-3770, 3.4GHz, 16GB DDR3, 2TG HDD, 3GB NvidiaGeForce GT-640, Windows 7 Home Premium 64k.

 

[mlevy]

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]

Hi mlevy,

Many thanks for the help and recommendations.

I had to remove my old TV tuner when I upgraded to Windows 7 because it wasn't compatible. I decided to wait for the new computer.

In the meantime, I did a bit more digging here and found out that our cable company (Rogers) doesn't offer Cable Cards like the US. Therefore, I'm back to setting up a digital cable box to my computer in order to access all channels available in my package (Digital & HD plus some specialty channels).

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

Thanks, ms

 

[dsperber]

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.

 

[crash2009]

We have

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