Depends on what you want. Others know a lot more about this stuff than I do, but here is a little info.
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HDHomeRun ($170) is a dual tuner solution that connects to the server via a network connection. It is capable of tuning unencrypted QAM with Sage and of course OTA. The only other product that is capable of this is the AutumnWave offerings. My understanding is that the HDHomeRun does not have an analog tuner at all.
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AutumnWave OnAir ($180) Is a single tuner solution that connects via USB . It can tune QAM with Sage and of course OTA. It can also tune regular analog; however, it uses software encoding for the analog so it's not that useful for analog capture. They have a
Creator model ($250) that does hardware encoding for analog.
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ATI 650 ($125) Can tune OTA HD, but doesn't do QAM with Sage. It is one of the few HD cards that does hardware encoding with analog, which makes it actually useful for capturing analog as well as HD.
-Everything else only does OTA HD with Sage and uses software encoding for analog capture.
Basically if you need or want QAM your choices are either the HDHomeRun or one of the AutumnWave products. If you're just going to do OTA and still need to capture some analog with the card the ATI 650 looks like a good choice. If OTA is all you want it for then something else would work. I haven't used any of the products so maybe people who have can give you their thoughts on how each product actually performs.
11-26-2006, 06:26 PM
Linear Mode
