What is the best dual-tuner HDTV capture card?

[morpheus]

I'm looking for a capture card with two HDTV tuners on board that will work with both OTA and unencrypted QAM in the United States. So far, I haven't been able to find any. The Hauppauge 1600 has two tuners, but only one of them is digital. Any recommendations?

[bmtrigger]

Originally Posted by morpheus

I'm looking for a capture card with two HDTV tuners on board that will work with both OTA and unencrypted QAM in the United States. So far, I haven't been able to find any. The Hauppauge 1600 has two tuners, but only one of them is digital. Any recommendations?

HDHomerun

[Fluffdaddy]

Yep..........HDHomerun

[morpheus]

But the HDHomeRun uses the network to transmit the video to the PC, doesn't it? Won't that degrade my network performance? What if I'm streaming to a SageTV client PC at the same time I'm capturing two channels of video?

I suppose I could install a second network adapter, but I'm out of PCI slots... has anyone tried this with a USB-Ethernet adapter? How is the performance?

[morpheus]

What about the vbox Cat’s Eye 164e? It says it supports ATSC, does that include QAM?

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by morpheus

I suppose I could install a second network adapter, but I'm out of PCI slots... has anyone tried this with a USB-Ethernet adapter? How is the performance?

I tried the USB-Ethernet adapter. my on-board Ethernet up and died for no reason and I was out of PCI slots, so I tried a USB-Ethernet adapter..............Bad Mojo there boys and girls. Skipping, poor performance and losing connect with my server if the screen server activates was just some of my problems with the USB-Ethernet adapter. After 2 weeks of that I ran and got a new main-board. USB-Ethernet/HTPC................ Bad Bad Mojo

[phelme]

Originally Posted by morpheus

But the HDHomeRun uses the network to transmit the video to the PC, doesn't it? Won't that degrade my network performance? What if I'm streaming to a SageTV client PC at the same time I'm capturing two channels of video?

Yes, the HDHR is a network device. Throwing lots of 9-18 Mbps HD streams around is fine... if you have gigabit ethernet switches, servers & clients all the way around. Otherwise you're asking for trouble.

It also helps to record your HD streams to two independent drives.

[azmouse]

I have the HD Homerun, with 1 Sage Client and 1 STX-100 all on the same 100mb segment and it works great. I am going to add a second NIC dedicated for the HD Homerun when I had a 2nd STX-100.

[sandor]

max ATSC signal is 19 mbps (or so) - that is only 2.375 MB/s.

most broadcasts actually seem to be about 15 mbps (1.9 MB/s), considering the sub-channels eat up that overall 19 mbps limit.

so yes, a 100 mbps netowork could only theoretically stand 5 ATSC feeds, but if you only have two tuners + two separate clients viewing at the same time, that 80 mbps should work on a 100 mbps network - back when i was on 100bT i could typically sustain 12 MB/s on my WRT54G. And if you look at the actual broadcast bandwidth, it would only be about 1/2 of the available bandwidth on a 100bT network.


i would say your 100bT on the server should be okay for now, but make sure you have a 1000bT router.