Best Tuner for Both Digital & Analog in MCE

[MitchellO]

Hey guys, I am looking to buy a tuner that will work with both Digital and Analog in Media Centre. I know I have to perform the hack to do it (currently running 3 Digital, gotta love it!), but need to add another that would need to do both Digi and Ana (for Foxtel).

Any thoughts?

Cheers

[renura]

Originally Posted by MitchellO

Hey guys, I am looking to buy a tuner that will work with both Digital and Analog in Media Centre. I know I have to perform the hack to do it (currently running 3 Digital, gotta love it!), but need to add another that would need to do both Digi and Ana (for Foxtel).

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Most Hybrid devices would do that. If you already have three internal tuners, I would probably go for a USB Hybrid device with analogue inputs, that way you can remove it wheh you don't need it and/or take it with you (use with your laptop etc) when travelling.

[MitchellO]

I've been trying to do with with your DigitalNow Dual Hybrid PCIe-x1 tuner with no success, MCE doesn't see the tuners for some reason.

[renura]

Originally Posted by MitchellO

I've been trying to do with with your DigitalNow Dual Hybrid PCIe-x1 tuner with no success, MCE doesn't see the tuners for some reason.

If you want to use the analogue TV tuners, you must use an encoder in order for MC to recognize them, you would then attached the RF output from your IQ
to the analogue RF input on the card and do a scan and should be able to tune into the Foxtel output.
If you want to use the AV inputs (ie composite or s-video), as far as I know that is not possible unless you have a hardware encoder on the card. The better alternative of course is to use alternative software for the analogue inputs, until Microsoft sees the light and add proper analogue video capture support to MC.

[logifuse]

Analog capture on non MPEG2 encoder cards is possible with the use of a soft encoder (MainConcept MCE Encoder being the most popular).

But beware - dual hybrid cards are generally 2 tuner devices - you can't think of them as 4 tuners (2 dig + 2 analog) as they will usually be unable to do both at the same time.

If the HVR-2200 gets sorted (in terms of running 2 in the same PC - currently a problem), then you could run 2 tuners as DVB-T on 1 card, & 1 tuner as DVB-T & 1 tuner as analog capture on the second card (it has a hardware encoder).

Justin

[MitchellO]

Thanks for that guys, will try it when I get home.

Yes I realise they are TWO hybrid tuners, not two digital and two analog. Built quite a few of these machines now, would hope I'd know that That was why I was thinking of getting another hybrid tuner, since the three digital tuners see concurrent use quite frequently.

[mitchellross]

G'day all
I have finally taken the next step in my MCE development and got Foxtel working! Many thanks to all the people on here that have posted the instructions for doing that. Its not easy, but after following all the instructions I have Foxtel playing through VMC and the channels changing via the IR blaster, happily working alongside my twin Cinergy digital tuners. Quite unbelievable really. I'm only using ICE TV for the moment, so I only have a FTA guide working, but I'll start playing with EPGSteam eventually.

However, the Silvertonce LC11 case that I'm using is absolutely full, so there was no room to fit an internal analogue tuner. Therefore, I purchased a DVICO FUSION NANO+ USB HDTV HYBRID TUNER. After using MainConcept (as described above), Vista picked up the analogue card and I was able to view Foxtel in MCE. BUT - the picture quality is pretty average and quickly moving objects are very, very jerky. Obviously, the NANO+ only accepts RF in from the Foxtel box, which may be part of the problem I guess.

My question is, what do you guys think can be done to fix the jerky picture using this tuner. Am I better off selling this particular tuner and trying some other USB option, which has composite in for instance (is there such a beast?) Or is it the USB itself that means that I will never get a completely smooth picture?

Any thoughts?

[mitchellross]

Or, the other option I'm toying with is getting a Silverstone LC20 case and putting an analogue card in that. If I was to do that, what's a good analogue PCI card to put in?