Vbox 150 or MyHD MDP 130 for my situation? No QAM needed, just OTA...

[bengance]

In the past I’ve tried a Hauppauge 150 analog tuner but couldn’t get any reception worthwhile to record. After reading some reviews of digital tuners, its seems this would be a much better bet as (according to antennaweb.org) I live less than 1 mile away from all the digital antennas. I have an older computer:

Athlon XP 2000+ (1.7ghz)
1.5GB ram
Windows XP SP2
ATI x1600 PRO 512mb

That I’d like record the digital channels and replay on our standard def TV. Per the reviews at http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com I’m leaning towards the Vbox cat’s eye 150 or a MyHD MDP 130. I’ll never need QAM as I don’t get cable and my town (Portland) has all the analog stations on digital as well, so I don’t think I’ll need a hybrid.

For software, I’ll probably just use what’s included in the box, or look into getting something like Beyond TV or Vista MCE. Anyone want to comment on whether the Vbox or the MyHD card?

[edDV]

Portland eh? I used to live up there off Barnes Rd. near those transmitters.

Two issues.
1. You are so close to the transmitters that overloading is a major issue. I'd ask over in the AVS tuner forum which tuner performs best with extremely strong signals and probably multipath. Early ATSC tuners had major close in problems.

2. You will be getting multiplexed 19Mb/s MPeg2_TS streams and the network stations will be using 14-18Mb/s HD for the primary channel. Most of the time this will be upscaled 4:3 material. Bottom line, even the SD material will be contained in HD 16:9 format. This will quickly fill your hard disk.

PBS will be a special problem until analog shutdown. The primary local channel is still on the analog NTSC station until 2009. The digital channel carries the national HD channel (off satellite) in the primary channel. Typically they will have two additional local SD digital subchannels for other programming.

Should all else fail with OTA overloading, cable QAM may be your only refuge. Id advise you get a tuner that is analog NTSC and QAM capable so that basic cable without cable box is a future option.

[jman98]

If this is any help to you, I have the MyHD MDP 130. It's a good card for OTA HD captures. The card itself worked fine, although I have a vague memory that I had to play with it a bit to get audio working OK since my audio card is built into the motherboard. I need to warn you that this card is terrible at analog SD captures. If all you ever record is OTA HD that won't be an issue for you, but you definitely do NOT want to use it for any analog TV captures, which includes feeding anything into via a cable box. You are wise to realize you have no need for QAM. Where I live my cable company puts all the digital channels at 800+ and there's no way to tune them in as the card won't go above channel 125, so while I have QAM, it's useless.

The only other advice I'd give you is that I personally found the freeware editing solutions for HD video to be essentially useless for me as my OTA reception was always kind of flakey and I always had dropped frames. I ended up buying VideoReDo which handles HD video really well. I tried freeware ways of editing my videos and none of them worked very well, but others have had different experience than me. I just pass this on in case you want to find a good way to edit HD video after capturing it.

[edDV]

...
Where I live my cable company puts all the digital channels at 800+ and there's no way to tune them in as the card won't go above channel 125, so while I have QAM, it's useless.

That isn't how QAM channels are tuned. QAM channels are an abstraction layer that don't follow the analog 6MHz channels or cable box channels. Long technical story but from the user prespective QAM clear channels can be scanned by the tuner, or you can go to your local AVS cable forum to find the manual QAM channel entry data. Consult the tuner manual for specific info for setting QAM channels.

QAM is the modulation method used for digital cable channels. OTA digital subchannels channels are are reassigned to QAM channels by the local cable company. Raw QAM channel data may look like this:
KNTV-HD :207000000:QAM_256:65:68:4

This is internal tuner code, user level channel abstraction may show this channel simply as KNTV-HD 11-1. The 11 has nothing to do with cable channel 11. It is a description.

Currently cable systems are required by the FCC to provide clear access to local digital QAM channels as part of basic service with no cable box required. This includes both SD and HD subchannels. In most areas basic cable service can be had for as little as $14/mo.

[jman98]

Thanks edDV. You are the first person who ever said anything meaningful about QAM. Last time I checked, which was a while ago, people on AVS were saying in my area that my cable company had encrypted QAM anyway. I have the impression that the encryption was done more out of ignorance (ie. the cable company was too stupid to turn it off) than anything else. I just went with a cable box and record directly to my PC via firewire and this works great for me.

[bengance]

Yes, thanks Ed. Right on Sylvan hill.

As far as QAM goes, its really a unnecessary for me. I don't ever see us getting cable unless Comcast decides to give it for a nickel. OTA is sufficient.

As far as space issues, I really intend only to use the tuner to provide our standard def TV access to digital reception (live TV) and recorded content. I believe you can generally scale down the quality of the recordings to save space. It might not look as good, but on a standard CRT will it matter?

I'm thinking of going for the Vbox 150 as it attempts to one thing only well, rather than the MyHD that does multiple things average.

[edDV]

Yes, thanks Ed. Right on Sylvan hill.

As far as QAM goes, its really a unnecessary for me. I don't ever see us getting cable unless Comcast decides to give it for a nickel. OTA is sufficient.

As far as space issues, I really intend only to use the tuner to provide our standard def TV access to digital reception (live TV) and recorded content. I believe you can generally scale down the quality of the recordings to save space. It might not look as good, but on a standard CRT will it matter?

I'm thinking of going for the Vbox 150 as it attempts to one thing only well, rather than the MyHD that does multiple things average.

My two points remain.

You may get nothing that close to the transmitter. You already said the PVR-150 won't work for analog. Make sure you can return the tuner for full refund.

Second point. Unless you know for a fact that card downscales in hardware, you will be dealing with 14-19Mb/s data flows from network stations (~7-9GB per hour) since those channels will be in HD format.

The point on NTSC and/or QAM is that may be your only option after 2009 if the OTA signal is too strong at your location.

Your distance to the transmitter can be measured more in sub kilometer rather than miles.

[bengance]

Thanks for the thoughts. Can anyone discuss their experiences with the cards? Or recommend one?

[jman98]

Thanks for the thoughts. Can anyone discuss their experiences with the cards? Or recommend one?

Um, my first post explicity talked about my experience with one of the cards you asked about. If you have specific questions that you feel that I didn't cover, I'd be glad to tell you what I can.