Advice for tuner card for WHS + SageTV

[araomd]

I just built a WHS with an AMD X4 mainly to use as a media server and PVR. I bought an HD300 and an HDHomeRun so I could drop Dish. I have "cable" into my house which I found incidentally when I got cable for my internet without a TV plan.
When I hooked it all up, I was getting only about 11 channels recognized when my TV saw about 60. Silicondust tells me it is I will only get the HD OTA channels from my HD HomeRun because they are digital, and the standard def channels I am getting from my cable are analog which the HDhomerun does not tune.

So I will return the HDhomerun and get a tuner that does both analog and digital (my WHS machine is right next to a cable outlet). I am confused with the number of options in video cards available. Does anyone have a recommendation for a card that seems to have the least number of issues? I live near a Microcenter, so would prefer to buy one from there for easy returns if I have an issue (I think these are the MC analog + digital cards)

Thanks in advance for the advice!

[KeithAbbott]

I would recommend a WinTV-HVR-2250 (http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0304068). It has dual tuners that can handle analog channels (w/hardware encoding, which is nice) or digital channels broadcast without encryption. It has a single TV coax input, and has an internal splitter to the dual tuners. It also comes with both a full-height mounting bracket, and a low-profile mounting bracket.

That all being said, recognize that many cable providers are dropping the analog stations. You may find that a month after you install everything, your cable provider shuts off the analog feed. Still, at that point, you'd be no worse off than you are with your existing HDHR.

[heffe2001]

I'll second the HVR2250's. I'm using 2 of them in WHS without any hitches. Get all the analog channels, and the digital channels as well (shows up as 8 tuners total for 2 cards, sage manages the individual tuners so it doesn't try to do a digital and analog channel at the same time on the same tuner).

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

I would recommend a WinTV-HVR-2250 (http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0304068). It has dual tuners that can handle analog channels (w/hardware encoding, which is nice) or digital channels broadcast without encryption. It has a single TV coax input, and has an internal splitter to the dual tuners. It also comes with both a full-height mounting bracket, and a low-profile mounting bracket.

That all being said, recognize that many cable providers are dropping the analog stations. You may find that a month after you install everything, your cable provider shuts off the analog feed. Still, at that point, you'd be no worse off than you are with your existing HDHR.

[araomd]

I appreciate the advice! I will pick one up this afternoon and report back.

[araomd]

Sigh, I am spending way to much time on this.

So the 2250 "finds" all of the channels, analog and digital. However, when I try and view an analog channel it says "can not tune". I think I am tired of messing with it and try another card.

Thanks for the advice anyway

[KeithAbbott]

As heffe2001 mentioned, once you have installed the card properly, you should have a total of four tuners defined within SageTV, two analog and two digital. You should only be able to see the analog stations using the analog tuners, if you are trying to view analog stations using the digital tuner, I don't think it will work.