Need recommendations for Capture card on Windows 7

[gurvindersinghb]

I have posted on another thread issues while trying to install drivers for Hauppauge PVR-350 so I am looking to upgrade SageTV for capturing HD channels from my Time Warner Cable.

Specifically I am looking for dual tuners Analog & Digital HD which have working drivers for Windows 7/Vista.

One of the cards I saw was WinTV-HVR-1800 PCI Express board:
a dual TV tuner board with hardware MPEG encoders, for receiving NTSC analog cable TV, ATSC over-the-air high definition digital TV and clear QAM digital cable TV.

Does anyone have experience with this card or suggestions for another one?

Thanks,
Gurvinder Singh

[Savage1701]

I think PCI-express is the way to go. An x1 lane has a theoretical bandwidth of 250MB/s which, being generous and allowing for overhead, is about 80 OTA HD streams or 100 HD-PVR streams. You'd obviously have saturation issues with other parts of your server first. :-)

I think you have a better chance of Win7 supporting anything newer, especially if you want 64-bit OS.

The Hauppauge 950Q USB stick has not given me any trouble, though, I have to admit. I've heard of Dvico having issues between themselves. I can't confirm that. I've run 2 Dvico PCI cards at once.

32-bit PCI has limited bandwidth if you start getting a lot of cards, although I've crammed 4 HD OTA's and 2 350's and it worked with BTV back when the earth was young...and Northwood was king...

I don't much care for USB stuff unless you have no choice (HD-PVR). Too many of those can cause issues. Or you get the dreaded "unknown device" error on USB and the fight is on...

Just a few thoughts.

[gurvindersinghb]

Thanks for the reply Savage1701.

I reviewed the forms on SageTV and Hauppauge and this is widely supported on Windows 7 so I went ahead and ordered it.

Thanks a have a great day.
Gurvinder Singh