Re: PCI TV Tuner for Windows XP x64
Hi, Steve.
Maybe I can add a couple of data points, for whatever they are worth.
I'm only a casual user of Media Center because I don't have TV cable and my
OTA reception on my 15-year-old omnidirectional antenna in the attic is
sporadic, ranging from excellent to awful, and often fluttering within a few
seconds. For a long time, I blamed Media Center, but finally realized that
it is really an antenna problem, not a tuner or software problem. (Well, it
WAS a software problem, too, but Hauppauge and Pinnacle finally brought that
up to acceptable levels.)
My rig is an EPoX MF570sli mobo/AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ CPU/4 GB OCZ PC6400
RAM, with ATI Radeon X1600 512 MB PCI-express card. It started with 2 GB
and was bumped to 4 GB a few months ago; I've never tried more than 4 GB,
which seems plenty to me. The tuners are a Hauppauge HVR-1600 PCI card
(Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600 NTSC/ATSC Combo, per Device Manager) and a
Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick (Pinnacle PCTV 800e), both bought about a year
ago. Device manager says both drivers, dated in 2007, are up to date. I'm
running Vista Ultimate x64. (For a couple of years, I used an ATI Radeon
All-In-Wonder on my old WinXP rig, but ATI never got the software right for
64-bit so I gave up on that.)
Our house was wired for TV cable when built in the late 1980s, but we've
never subscribed to TV Cable here. I bought a $100 omnidirectional antenna
(looks like a big white pizza) from Radio Shack and mounted it on a pole in
the attic. Then I cut the five cables the builder had installed and
connected them to the antenna so that I have identical reception at five
jacks in the house. One of the jacks, using a splitter, is connected to the
computer's two tuners. (Neither the small antenna supplied with the Pro
Stick nor the antenna booster I bought from Radio Shack seem to help much,
if at all.)
We live about 30 miles from Austin and 50 miles from San Antonio. On our TV
in the living room, we get about a dozen channels, with variations based on
the weather, of course. We can reliably watch all the major networks,
including Fox and PBS, plus a couple of independent channels. On my
computer, I can see most of the same channels, but some don't come in and
some are sporadic.
All the hardware and software work fine for me, except for the poor OTA
reception because of the weak antenna.
I've bought a couple of the new digital TV converter boxes (RCA and
Magnavox). For reasons I don't understand, they both rate reception from
the one antenna at about 40% on the connection in the bedroom but only 15%
in the living room. We'll need to resolve that problem by February; it
doesn't directly impact MC but they both rely on our antenna and are surely
related.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1)
"Steve Winograd" <bc070521m@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:8ea1645088bepmu17jh8fenmqi0oiomvji@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:00:28 -0400, "Tom Lake"
> <toml_12953@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> I have a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 PCI tuner in my Vista x64 box. Device
>>> Manager shows it as "Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II (26xxx).
>>>
>>> It works fine, along with my AVerMedia M791 PCIe Combo NTSC/ATSC
>>> tuner.
>>
>>Yeah but how much RAM do you have? If you increase it to over 4 GB, the
>>PVR-150 will stop working.
>
> I had 4 GB, but that apparently caused the problems with the AVerMedia
> tuner that I described in my message "Audio and Video Problems in
> Windows Media Center" of June 20. I took out a 1 GB RAM module, and
> both tuners are working well with 3 GB.
>
>>If you have 4 GB or less why would you want to run 64-bit OS anyway?
>
> More stable than 32-bit, more secure, signed drivers, etc.
>
>>Tom Lake
> --
> Best Wishes,
> Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)