HDTV Capture Card

[mattman1968]

I've been wanting to get a HD capture card. The requirement is that it support QAM 256 for unencrypted cable. My plasma works beautifully with the same type tuner. So far I think I've narrowed my choices down to the Dvico FusionHDTV-RT 5 Lite ($99) or the Kworld PlusTV HD PCI-115 ($80). They both appear to have the same features. Does anybody have experience with either of these 2 cards that makes one stand out over the other? Also, can anybody elaborate on the sound quality of these cards? I know the PVR-150 and my Avermeda UltraTv have/had sound issues on recorded material. I'd prefer to not deal with any of those issues if possible.

Thanks,

Mattman

[jman98]

I have a different HDTV card that is QAM ready and I have to warn you about something. If your cable company puts the HD channels above 125 on your cable, I don't think you'll be able to tune them in. I could never get it to work. My cable company puts them above 800 and since my card would only scan to 125, I had no way to get them. Maybe somebody else here knows something I didn't know to do, but I ended up having to get an HD cable box to get the channels at all. My over the air reception is very poor where I live and since my card couldn't tune in the channels over number 125, I had no choice but to get an HD cable box.

[mattman1968]

Jman,

Did you do a channel scan and pick up anything on the subchannels, like 111-1, for instance? When I first set up my plasma and did a scan I got hundreds of hits, literally, from channels 111-1, 111-2,111-3, etc... And this was on nearly every channel. It sucked because I had to channel up on every one, see if it was actually receiving a broadcast, and if so, decipher which channel it actually was and the broadcast method (480i, 720p or 1080i). Since then, my cable company has rerouted 111-1 to actually be received on channel 7-2 for ABC HD. With a cable box it's 204, or something like that. My tv's scanner only goes to 135. Hope this can help you and good luck.

[jman98]

I get subchannels ONLY if I attach an antenna to my card, but I do get them. If I attach a cable box to my card, I was never able to make it scan anything off the cable box. Since my over the air reception got worse over time to the point that everything became essentially unwatchable due to horrible dropouts, I had to go with a cable box. My card has QAM too, but nothing I did ever scanned in the cable box HD channels, not even entering them manually. So my choices were:
1) Use an antenna but never get reliable reception and be totally unable to get some channels I want to see.
2) Use a cable box, but never be able to use the HD tuning features of my HD TV card.
I went for the latter as I found a way to record unencrypted (the only thing I care about) HD broadcasts to my PC via firewire from the cable box and it was better than my OTA recordings were, so I really don't have much need for the HD TV card anymore.