Analog tuner recommendations?

[hb4]

I am moving from the city to a rural home that is served by a small mom-and-pop cable tv provider. They broadcast all channels in analog except for the locals which are clear QAM.

I've been spoiled by my HDHRPrime and hoping to find a tuner or dual tuner with hardware encoding that will work reliably at my new location.

Recommendations?

[Fuzzy]

satellite dish and an HD-PVR?

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by hb4

I am moving from the city to a rural home that is served by a small mom-and-pop cable tv provider. They broadcast all channels in analog except for the locals which are clear QAM.

I've been spoiled by my HDHRPrime and hoping to find a tuner or dual tuner with hardware encoding that will work reliably at my new location.

Recommendations?

Sounds like you could just get the clearQAM SiliconDust tuners and be all set. I was running several of them on my Cable/ClearQAM setup until Comcast screwed everyone by encrypting all channels and no more clear QAM locals.

Then I had to get some HDHR Primes to replace the old HDHomeRuns to go along with my 2 HD-PVRs/STBs that I had for the channels that weren't in the clear under the old system.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Sounds like you could just get the clearQAM SiliconDust tuners and be all set. I was running several of them on my Cable/ClearQAM setup until Comcast screwed everyone by encrypting all channels and no more clear QAM locals.

Then I had to get some HDHR Primes to replace the old HDHomeRuns to go along with my 2 HD-PVRs/STBs that I had for the channels that weren't in the clear under the old system.

The hdhr will not tune analog channels. It is digital only.

[hb4]

Thanks, Fuzzy; Satellite is certainly an option, but the cable solution provides TV and internet at a pretty good price. Can I use the old 3-meter dish that came with the property?

If I want to record several channels at once, I believe I'll need a tuner for each one. On-board encoding sounds like a good thing. Which is better, USB boxes or PCI? Are there PCIe cards available and proven for SageTV/analog tuning?

I found a archive of SageTV recommended devices here and looked at specs for the Hauppage WinTV-PVR-USB2 MCE and WinTV-PVR-350 TV devices. Used ones are in the $25-$35 range. They look OK, but I'm hoping that there's still some folks out there with present or past experience.

[JustFred]

From your sig, I see you're using Windows. Think twice before going for any of the "older" generation Hauppauge stuff such as WinTV-PVR-USB2 MCE and WinTV-PVR-350 TV, unless you only plan to connect them to a Win-Xp box. Those devices don't have drivers for Win7 and later.

On the other hand, the Hauppauge HVR-2250 (and now 2255) is a reasonable choice for NTSC, ATSC & clear QAM. Dual tuners, PCIe bus and drivers for Win7 and beyond. I recently scored some nice 2250's on eBay for < $50 ea, but do your research because certain versions of that model won't work with some of the newest PCIe chipsets. I understand that the 2255's have no such limitations.

If you'd prefer a network-attached tuner, the SiliconDust HDHR series is a great choice and supports ATSC (is that what you're referring to as "analog"?) and clear QAM. For your situation, you probably don't want the HDHR Prime, since that doesn't support ATSC.

[wayner]

I second satellite - If it is analog then it will only be in SD - can you really downgrade back to SD?

[hb4]

Pretty sure the signal is straight NTSC Analog. The cable operator has a customer base 170 here on the island, and can't justify having customers buy set top boxes, plus the 80K cost to upgrade the head-end.

Thanks, JustFred; just the info I needed regarding straight NTSC analog tuners.

Can I go back to SD? That's a good question.

Now, Satellite opens up another can of worms....
Are there multiple-tuner options for either Dish or DTV?

[BobPhoenix]

I have 5 DirecTV STBs and record with SVideo from the lone SD box and HDMI (Colossus v1) from another box. For the last 3 HD boxes I use Component (HD-PVR). I am also using HTTP to change channels on the 4 HD boxes and serial for the SD box.