Looking for a high-quality analog tuner

[AzJazz]

I think I'm covered on the digital side, since I just purchased a HDHomerun.

However, I also need a analog tuner that I can connect to my Cable TV line.

I am looking for a high-quality analog tuner (about 75% of my recording will occur on the analog tuner)

So, what I would like is (in order of preference):

• Did I mention signal quality? I'd like it to be comparable to my old S-Video signal DirectTV box, if possible.
• USB or Network interfaces preferred (PCI is not an option, though 4x PCI-E would be a backup)
• Hardware Analog processing
• Comb filters (or other signal processing) that will allow the signal to look good on my 60" HDTV

Any ideas?

TIA!

AzJazz

[stevenkd]

I started with a very old Pinnacle TV tuner. When I switched to digital cable, I went out an bought a Pinnacle Pro stick, package said it would get HD. Did not read the data sheet carefully enough, only gets OTA HD, picked up everything else in analog. I was also not familiar with hardware encoders on the tuners, so the Pro Stick used a lot of memory (I have 1 gig memory). I then thought I was covered for digital when I then bought the with the HDhomerun. However the cable company encrypted most of the channels, even the ones available free on analog, such as AMC, USA, etc. Most of the QAM that was unencrypted was the local HD stuff, infomercial channels, and things I was not interested in. Did get great quality though. I next bought the Happauge HVR-1600 and SageTV combo from Sage. HVR-1600 works ok, not quite as good a quality on the HD side as the HDHomerun, but I don't watch that much HD content. Card worked much better, but I wanted to be able to get the upperband digital channels such as HBO, Starz, LMN, etc. so I bought a DCP-501 and had Comcast provision it and hooked it up to the S-video input on the HVR-1600. Gets great quality. I also bought a PVR-500 as I wanted to be able to record more than 1 show at a time. It has decent quality, but the digital output on the DCP-501 is far better than the analog from the PVR-500. I intend to get another DCP-501 someday to get 2 digital recordings at the same time.

As to your original request, I have found the Happauge cards better than the other 2 I tried, but not as good as the HDhomrun. Make sure the card you get has a hardware encoder on it, very important.

[ke6guj]

One option would be the Hauppauge USB-PVR, http://www.hauppauge.com/site/produc...a_pvrusb2.html . It is a hardware encoder.

[AzJazz]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys!

I stopped by Fry's Electronics last night, and I found a VisionTek ATI HD-650 Combo USB for $120 (after rebate). I had received a note from SageTV saying that it wasn't supported, but I figured I'd give it a shot anyways. (With Fry's I could always return it for free if I didn't like it).

Generally, ATI HD 650 Combo USB seems to work great with SageTV for both OTA ATSC and Analog signal quality (after I got past a few setup issues getting the ATI TV Control Panel for comb filtering installed). QAM does not seem to be supported by SageTV yet, so that might be why the HD-650 is not officially approved by SageTV. I'm still trying to figure the QAM out.

I am running into an occaisional noise issue (wavy patterns) that appears to be riding on most of the analog channels (also seen on a traditional TV as well). I'm not blaming the HD-650 for that. When the analog signal was clean, the HD-650 looked about as good as what I would get on DirectTV.

Cheers!

AzJazz