Recommended HD TV card/dongle?

I'm interested in getting a TV tuner card or dongle, mainly for the purpose
of recording/timeshifting TV and would appreciate some input as the market
seems to be a bit of a jungle! I want one for HD (ie Freeview), which
seems to be making life complicated? Is it a "T2" device which I need?
Seem to be very little around which I find puzzling/worrying.

Are there good reasons to go for a card as opposed to a dongle?
Cosmetically, obviously the card wins out; however I'm quite interested in
the Haupage nanostick [http://tinyurl.com/qfwvbg9 (or
http://www.amazon.co.uk/PCTV-Systems-DVB-T2-nanoStick-
Tuner/dp/B004C1176E/ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE)] simply
because it purportedly works directly with my Netgear ReadyNas Duo v2 NAS,
using DVBLink add-on software (http://dvblogic.com/en/software/netgear-arm-
marvell/). To be honest, although this would be fantastic and my ultimate
solution, I wouldn't rate my chances of getting that setup working as there
are stacks of forum threads about problems; it seems poorly supported,
highly technical and probably out of my league... might be nice to try it,
with a standard PC setup as a fallback?

Oh, and it's going to have to work under Windows 7 I'm afraid - linux etc
solutions not an option here.

Any advice or thoughts most welcome.

--
David

In article , Lobster
wrote:
I'm interested in getting a TV tuner card or dongle, mainly for the
purpose of recording/timeshifting TV and would appreciate some input as
the market seems to be a bit of a jungle! I want one for HD (ie
Freeview), which seems to be making life complicated? Is it a "T2"
device which I need? Seem to be very little around which I find
puzzling/worrying.

Are there good reasons to go for a card as opposed to a dongle?

Easier to move from one machine to another. That can be convenient at
times.

FWIW I find the 290e USB dongle works nicely for HD as well as SD. Thought
I mainly use it for mux examination/analysis it also does fine recordings.

Oh, and it's going to have to work under Windows 7 I'm afraid - linux
etc solutions not an option here.

Oh well, sorry that you're forbidden a choice. Can't help with that
problem. But I imagine many people use the 290e under similar difficulties.
Good luck. :-)

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Lobster wrote:

I'm interested in getting a TV tuner card or dongle, mainly for the
purpose of recording/timeshifting TV and would appreciate some input as
the market
seems to be a bit of a jungle! I want one for HD (ie Freeview), which
seems to be making life complicated? Is it a "T2" device which I need?
Seem to be very little around which I find puzzling/worrying.

Are there good reasons to go for a card as opposed to a dongle?
Cosmetically, obviously the card wins out; however I'm quite interested in
the Haupage nanostick [http://tinyurl.com/qfwvbg9 (or
http://www.amazon.co.uk/PCTV-Systems-DVB-T2-nanoStick- Tuner/dp/B004C1176E/ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE)] simply
because it purportedly works directly with my Netgear ReadyNas Duo v2 NAS,
using DVBLink add-on software
(http://dvblogic.com/en/software/netgear-arm- marvell/). To be honest,
although this would be fantastic and my ultimate solution, I wouldn't rate
my chances of getting that setup working as there are stacks of forum
threads about problems; it seems poorly supported, highly technical and
probably out of my league... might be nice to try it, with a standard PC
setup as a fallback?

Oh, and it's going to have to work under Windows 7 I'm afraid - linux etc
solutions not an option here.

Any advice or thoughts most welcome.


I'm using a tds-6280 (2 tuners but they make a 4 tuner model as well).
They support Windows and give excellent support under Linux too. I am
running it under Mageia 3. It gives excellent results.

http://www.tbsdtv.com/

Hope that helps

Regards, Alan

--
__________________________________________________ _

Mageia 3 for x86_64, Kernel: 3.8.13.4 -desktop-1.mga3
KDE version 4.10.5 Running on an AMD 4-core processor

"Pinnerite" wrote in message
...
Lobster wrote:

I'm interested in getting a TV tuner card or dongle,
mainly for the
purpose of recording/timeshifting TV and would appreciate
some input as
the market
seems to be a bit of a jungle! I want one for HD (ie
Freeview), which
seems to be making life complicated? Is it a "T2" device
which I need?
Seem to be very little around which I find
puzzling/worrying.

Are there good reasons to go for a card as opposed to a
dongle?
Cosmetically, obviously the card wins out; however I'm
quite interested in
the Haupage nanostick [http://tinyurl.com/qfwvbg9 (or
http://www.amazon.co.uk/PCTV-Systems-DVB-T2-nanoStick-
Tuner/dp/B004C1176E/ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE)]
simply
because it purportedly works directly with my Netgear
ReadyNas Duo v2 NAS,
using DVBLink add-on software
(http://dvblogic.com/en/software/netgear-arm- marvell/).
To be honest,
although this would be fantastic and my ultimate
solution, I wouldn't rate
my chances of getting that setup working as there are
stacks of forum
threads about problems; it seems poorly supported, highly
technical and
probably out of my league... might be nice to try it,
with a standard PC
setup as a fallback?

Oh, and it's going to have to work under Windows 7 I'm
afraid - linux etc
solutions not an option here.

Any advice or thoughts most welcome.


I'm using a tds-6280 (2 tuners but they make a 4 tuner
model as well).
They support Windows and give excellent support under
Linux too. I am
running it under Mageia 3. It gives excellent results.

http://www.tbsdtv.com/

Hope that helps

Regards, Alan



Why can I not find anything about the 6280 on their web
site? The only mention is over problems with it discussed in
the forum.


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

I'm using a tds-6280 (2 tuners but they make a 4 tuner model as well).
They support Windows and give excellent support under Linux too. I am
running it under Mageia 3. It gives excellent results.

FWIW I couldn't find any DVB tuners on that (US) site and they don't
seem to have a UK site but I did on the site of one of their UK
distributors -
http://kubik-digital.com/product/tbs...eiver-tbs6280/

--
Robin
reply to address is (meant to be) valid

On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 11:00:07 +0000, Pinnerite
wrote:

Lobster wrote:

I'm interested in getting a TV tuner card or dongle, mainly for the
purpose of recording/timeshifting TV and would appreciate some input as
the market
seems to be a bit of a jungle! I want one for HD (ie Freeview), which
seems to be making life complicated? Is it a "T2" device which I need?
Seem to be very little around which I find puzzling/worrying.

Are there good reasons to go for a card as opposed to a dongle?
Cosmetically, obviously the card wins out; however I'm quite interested in
the Haupage nanostick [http://tinyurl.com/qfwvbg9 (or
http://www.amazon.co.uk/PCTV-Systems-DVB-T2-nanoStick- Tuner/dp/B004C1176E/ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE)] simply
because it purportedly works directly with my Netgear ReadyNas Duo v2 NAS,
using DVBLink add-on software
(http://dvblogic.com/en/software/netgear-arm- marvell/). To be honest,
although this would be fantastic and my ultimate solution, I wouldn't rate
my chances of getting that setup working as there are stacks of forum
threads about problems; it seems poorly supported, highly technical and
probably out of my league... might be nice to try it, with a standard PC
setup as a fallback?

Oh, and it's going to have to work under Windows 7 I'm afraid - linux etc
solutions not an option here.

Any advice or thoughts most welcome.


I'm using a tds-6280 (2 tuners but they make a 4 tuner model as well).
They support Windows and give excellent support under Linux too. I am
running it under Mageia 3. It gives excellent results.

http://www.tbsdtv.com/

Hope that helps


The TBS6280 doesn't appear to be a current product. The only products
listed are for satellite or cable.

Software downloads are available for the 6280 and for the 4 tuner
version.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

On 04/02/2014 09:55, Jim Lesurf wrote:
In . 92.236, Lobster
wrote:


Are there good reasons to go for a card as opposed to a dongle?

Easier to move from one machine to another. That can be convenient at
times.


Are you sure that you answered the question which he asked?
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 13:37:09 +0000, Peter Duncanson wrote:

The TBS6280 doesn't appear to be a current product. The only products
listed are for satellite or cable.

I also use this one, has world flawlessy the last couple of years. No
longer on TBS site, but it is available here along with the quad tuner
mentioned.

http://www.quietpc.com/tbs-tv-cards?...FesSwwodnRAAng

"CD" wrote in message ...

On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 13:37:09 +0000, Peter Duncanson wrote:

The TBS6280 doesn't appear to be a current product. The only products
listed are for satellite or cable.

I also use this one, has world flawlessy the last couple of years. No
longer on TBS site, but it is available here along with the quad tuner
mentioned.

http://www.quietpc.com/tbs-tv-cards?...FesSwwodnRAAng
+++++++++++
Out of interest, what do people do with these tuner cards and PCs? Seems
that for almost the same price one could buy a Humax PVR, perhaps even a
large USB external drive, and use the various tweaked firmwares to run the
Humax as a media server. So what's the attraction (apart from the nerdy
fiddling, which I admit to myself) to building-your-own?

Paul DS.

On Tue, 4 Feb 2014 16:11:26 -0000, Paul D Smith wrote:

Out of interest, what do people do with these tuner cards and PCs? Seems
that for almost the same price one could buy a Humax PVR, perhaps even a
large USB external drive, and use the various tweaked firmwares to run the
Humax as a media server. So what's the attraction (apart from the nerdy
fiddling, which I admit to myself) to building-your-own?

I run MediaPortal with ArgusTV, for a full on Media PC. XBMC is another
that has good reports, but I can't get on with.

You can merge channels on satellite & terrestrial, so if all the tuners are
in use on DVB-T2 it will go to DVB-S2.

Record multiple streams from the same MUX using one tuner - last time I had
a PVR this wasn't possible, can they do it now? For instance, say I wanted
to record BBC1/2, ITV, C4 & CBBC/BBC3 in HD at once it will do so using
just one DVB-T2 tuner, leaving the rest free.
During testing I managed to get 30+ channels recording at once across the 4
tuners.

The PC with the cards in acts as a server, meaning my 8 year old can be
consigned to the other room & watch live TV or any of the 168 (& counting)
Horrid Henry episodes. Likewise if the missus is watching some dross, I can
skulk off & watch Storage Wars upstairs on my laptop.

Schedule recordings remotely. Do clever rules based scheduling, I'll quote
from the Argus site
" Record any "CSI" episode shown somewhere between 7PM and 11PM, but
not the ones from "Miami", and don't record episodes that have been
recorded before.
Record "The Simpsons" every Monday and Wednesday on Channel Foo around
7PM (so also when it's shown at 7:15PM or 6:55PM).
Record all movies with "Samuel Jackson" on BBC1 or BBC2 and don't
record movies that have been recorded before.
Record all documentaries on NGC or Discovery Channel that have "Global
warming" in their description. " and so on.

Then there's the plugins, Online Videos - all the TV catch up stuff,
iplayer etc. from the same interface. Loads more..

It can be difficult to get WAF & you're forever tweakig & fiddling.
I don't think I could go back to a bog standard PVR now.