tv cards questions

[GJ02]

i may look into getting a satellite tv card
i have spoken to a very helpful man from one of the northwests leading satellite and aerial centres who has explained about dish sizes and zones.
what i need to know is are all satelite tv cards more or less the same
this one http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-021-CP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=169

compared to a hauppague nova-s, obviously the hauppague is more of a well known brand hence the higher price tag, is this purely the reason, is it just the name or do they perform significantly better than any other brands?
im looking at pointing it at free to air channels, this nice bloke i was talking to told me i will be able to pick up around 375 - 450 free to air channels.
can anyone offer any advise on these cards or reccomend a satellite tv card ?
cheers

 

[Art]

compared to a hauppague nova-s, obviously the hauppague is more of a well known brand hence the higher price tag, is this purely the reason, is it just the name or do they perform significantly better than any other brands?

I don't have any experience with satellite cards, but I've got a Pinnacle USB terrestrial/freeview receiver, and the one thing I'd say is if you can, check out the software before you buy. The stuff I got with my Pinnacle Nano is truly woeful: it's incredibly slow, very user-unfriendly, crashes at random for no apparent reason and will happily take an hour or two scanning for channels. I've now dumped Pinnacle TVCenter Pro for Vista media centre, which works perfectly.

I don't think they'd differ too much in terms of hardware, but if you can check out the software beforehand. It's gobsmacking what some companies will try to pass off as version 4.x retail software.

 

[errata]

I have a hauppage hd dvb-s2 pci for sattelite, the hardwares fine and there is support that seems to span several versions of windows. The latest version of their viewing software is just out for my card but its a work in progress.

Hauppauge do seem to plug away at support and are the 'ipod' of tv cards, theres a lot of users the products mostly good but they are more expensive.



google that card and you should get plenty of hits reviewing it, probably hating some of the TV software, (they have several applications). Look for driver support in media centre or dvbviewer its a popular application for sattelite cards. Its a mature product should be loads of info from users

you may want a card that complies with dvb-s2 standards for the medium term future and some HD broadcasts