Review of Hauppauge HVR-1600 and AverMedia M780

[wnnbgwrrr]

A lot of people are asking about tuner cards around here and I found this recent review on Missing Remote. I liked it because it explains some of the differences between hybrid and combo tuners, and was reviewing two newer dual tuner cards from Hauppauge and AverMedia. Thought others might want to check it out: http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1542&Itemid=1.

[kovboi]

thanks for the heads up! :thup:
but i'm curious, what is the advantage of having a combo card? not sure i get the concept.

[Neuromancer]

thanks for the heads up! :thup:
but i'm curious, what is the advantage of having a combo card? not sure i get the concept.


From that link

What is a 'combo' ATSC/NTSC Tuner?
There are two terms used in the ATSC/NTSC tuner market, while the definitions aren't 100% agreed upon, there is a general trend for their usage. The first term is 'hybrid' which is a rather simple design where the tuning module is a hybrid ATSC and NTSC tuner, this arrangement is an "either/or" setup: either you tune an analog channel (NTSC) or you tune a digital channel (ATSC). 'Hybrid' tuners are not desirable as they force you to choose one or the other, what is more these cards are often less compatible with MCE 2005 which expects to see a dedicated analog tuner alongside the digital tuner, in a hybrid design the analog tuner suddenly disappears/is locked from use when a digital TV channel is tuned.
The more desirable type of ATSC and NTSC tuner card is referred to as a 'combo' tuner. A 'combo' tuner is designed so that there are separate, dedicated, analog and digital tuners on the card, thus they can be used independently. What is more, these cards normally have hardware encoding for the analog TV portion, the same can't be said of 'hybrid' cards.

[LandShark]

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=512396

:cool:

[wnnbgwrrr]

Ahh... I missed that LandShark. I did a search before I posted it, but it didn't pick up on that. :shrug:

edit:
yup. seems like a great tuner and I too like the fact that it's a PCIe card!!
I don't know about you but I liked the image that the HVR-1600 provdided better than the M780. Would you disagree?