Hauppauge HVR-1600 vs HVR-1800 ??

[Crowdx42]

Hi all,
been a long time since I have posted here but I am now considering going digital and I am wondering what are my options. I have Comcast cable in the San Francisco East Bay area. I am seeing a lot of posts on Hauppauge HVR-1600 and HVR-1800s, what is the main differences?
Currently I run 3 PVR-250 cards with an AMD Dual core 4800 and 2 gig of memory, ATI HD3870 is the video card.
All advice welcome

[BFisher]

to my knowledge, the only 1600 vs 1800 difference is the form factor in the PC.

[Crowdx42]

Thank you for the response,, I am seeing now with some links that came with your response that the 1800 has an FM tuner.

So another question on the digital aspect of the tuners cards. With Comcast digital cable, can these cards get the low end digital channels or is it only through the cable box and so needing multiple cable boxes for dual tuner setups?
Thanks for input

[BFisher]

I don't have cable (I use OTA and Satellite)... sorry. It should receive any digital cable signals that are not encrypted. If it's encrypted, you'd need a cable box to view it.

[LazyGun]

I recently just RMA'd my HVR-1800 for a 1600 MCE. The only difference between those 2 is the interface. The 1800 is PCI-E, and the 1600 is PCI. There appears to be an older version of the 1600 that has different connections and doesn't have the FM tuner. My MCE has the same connections as the 1800 I had.

The only difference to me was that the 1800 locked my PC up continuously, where as so far the 1600 has been pretty solid.

Got all my QAM channels tuned through my Comcast connection. Took about an hour or 2 to get them all configured.
I use a direct cable connection for those, and then all the other channels I just have a small STB connected via S-Video and use that to tune the rest of the channels. Not sure about getting the low end channels in the clear, I haven't bothered trying.

[Djc208]

As stated the 1600 is a PCI card the 1800 is a PCI-e card. So which one you get will depend on which slots you have open on the MB.

Originally Posted by Crowdx42

So another question on the digital aspect of the tuners cards. With Comcast digital cable, can these cards get the low end digital channels or is it only through the cable box and so needing multiple cable boxes for dual tuner setups?
Thanks for input

The digital tuner cards can only recieve OTA (over the air aka antenna) broadcasts and unencrypted digital channels (aka clear QAM). In most places the only unencrypted digital channels you will get are the locals that would be available with an antenna (maybe) and possibly a few odd non-network channels.

For everything else "digital" that you get you have to use a tuner box connected to either the S-video port on a capture card, the new HD-PVR via component for HD, or an R5000 modified box via USB for everything.

You would need one cable box per tuner/capture port and some way to control each seperately (USB UIRT, serial, or firewire control).