Which is Best DVB S PCI Card- Azurewave or Technotrend for dish ?

[sammy1]

Which is Best DVB S PCI Card Azurewave or Technotrend for dish ?

Using vista & my theatre which HD PCI card is most dependable, Azurewave sp400 or Technotrend 3200 (or any other pci card) for US use for dish network & w AMD athlon 64 dual core 4600 processor, & Geforce 8600 256 mb video card w upgraded power supply to 500 watts?

Thank you this is my first post.

[SatStorm]

Welcome to the forum.
Search here for opinions regarding DVB S cards:

www.videohelp.com/capturecards

[TBoneit]

AFAIK there are no DVB cards that will work with Dishnetwork. This is due to the encryption that is used.

Before buying get that money back guarantee from the seller. They may get a couple of free channels but that would be things like the Dish information channel and maybe NASA tv.

If you want HD captures from Dish you would need a Dish HD receiver and a card that can accept HDMI or Component video from the satellite receiver.

[TBoneit]

OOps Double Post

[SatStorm]

@TBoneit: Dish Network use Nagravision 2 for encryption. It is easy to buy a DVB /S card like skystar 2, a phonix smart mouse, run progdvb and the poor man's nagra plug in and watch those channels. There are also other software alternatives for this. Just put your subscription card on your smart mouse...

SDTV broadcasts of Dishnetwork from AMC 15 at 105.0°W, EchoStar 8/10 at 110.0°W, EchoStar 7 at 119.0°W, EchoStar 9 at 121.0°W and EchoStar 1/2 at 148.0°W need a simply DVB S2 card.

The HDTV broadcasts of Dishnetwork from EchoStar 3 & Rainbow 1 at 61.5°W and EchoStar 5 at 129.0°W need a DVB S2 card like SkyStar HD, with the Common Interface extension and a Dragon, T-Rex or Diabolo CAM (imported probably from Europe) so to put the card. You don't need a phoenix smartmouse ofcourse that way. Untill Progdvb start the support on those cards, this is the only solution for the HD programs of Dish Network.

The only F.T.A. (Free to Air) HD channel I know in the U.S.A. are the various versions of PBS HDTV and a couple of promos. There is also Movie Central High Definition on band C, the Outdoor Channel 2HD and a spanish channel called Movie City.

Since I'm not American, I can't confirm all this. I just pass the info from DVB dedicated forums. Here in Europe, we do such things all the time.

[TBoneit]

Learn something new every day. I recall Dishnetwork was looking into selling a PC card. The project was dropped as I remember it because of the channel providers didn't want their channels being received in the computer as being to easy to capture that way.

Believe it or not I did know it was Nagravision encryption. I myself get my channels from 110, 119 and 61.5 satellite locations. I wonder if the card being married to the receiver is a problem? Also if the card cannot update from the satellite streams it will gradually lose programing as the programming tiers expire.

I've been a sub for 8 years +/-.

Bottom line is that it isn't as simple as get a dvb card and start watching. Which is what was implied IMHO by the OP.

For me I can already capture the SD and HD channels to DVD via a DVD recorder or a Haupaggue USB device into the computer. I watch via a HD DVR and since the computer monitor and the TV are one and the same there is no real appeal for a PCI card to capture or watch.

I am interested in a QAM TV card for locals since dish only has the big 4 in HD and thus I only get SD versions of the 3 PBS stations and 2 other stations. WWOR, & WPIX. I could watch the HD channels live (Yuck) over the TV sets tuner but I hate non DVR watching.

Thanks for correcting me.
Cheers