Dual analog TV tuner with dual RF connectors recommendations needed

[davephan]

Most of my Comcast analog channels are going away this month. I picked up two free DTA boxes from Comcast. Each DTA box has two RF connector. One connector hooks up to the cable coax, the other connector outputs channel 3 or 4. Each DTA box is controlled by a remote control. I plan to feed the channel 3 output into an analog tuner card and control the DTA with a USB-UIRT.

The problem is I have a HVR-2250, which has dual analog or digital tuners. However, the HVR-2250 only has one RF connector for TV (another connector for FM). Therefore, I only use one tuner, and the other tuner is wasted, unused. Most of the newer dual tuner cards seem to also have only one TV RF connector.

I would like to get a dual tuner that has two separate RF connectors on it. Each of the two DTA boxes then could be connected to each separate RF connectors. I would rather use a dual tuner card, so it only takes up one slot in the computer. I would also like to use a PCI slot if possible to reserve my PCI express slots for other cards. If it was a better choice, I could use up one of my PCI express slots on a dual tuner, dual connector tuner card.

Does anyone have recommendations for analog dual tuners PCI cards with dual RF antenna connectors? I assume that I might have to buy a used card with the older technology.

Dave

[GKusnick]

Why not set one DTA to channel 3 and one to channel 4 and use a splitter in reverse to combine them into one RF signal? Signal strength coming out of the DTA should be adequate for that.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Why not set one DTA to channel 3 and one to channel 4 and use a splitter in reverse to combine them into one RF signal? Signal strength coming out of the DTA should be adequate for that.

That's a great idea! I didn't think of that! I'll try it out when I get home tonight.

Dave

[davephan]

I just setup two Comcast DTA boxes.

I tried connecting the outputs of both boxes to a splitter in reverse to feed one coax line into a Hauppauge HVR-2250. It failed, both signals from each DTA box cancelled each other out, resulting in no signals into the HVR-2250.

I found an old Tru Spec Model SC-3 signal combiner I bought years ago, but never used. The signal combiner worked to combine both DTA RF outputs into one coax feeding the HVR-2250 dual tuner's single RF input jack. One DTA box is set for channel 3, the other DTA box is set for channel 4.

I setup two of the USB-UIRT zones to control the two DTA boxes. The third USB-UIRT zone controls a HD cable box which feeds a HD-PVR.

The setup works great. It doesn't waste a tuner with a single RF input dual tuner, and only uses up one PCI-E slot.

Dave