Which Freeview card would you go for?

Baron_Samedi said:
:D Dark_Shadow, if you want one tuner, in a stock XP environment I would advise you to buy the Nebula.

If you want twin tuners, and believe me I did after a short while, I would go for the Terratec. For me it wins in the UI, selectivity of the tuner and build quality of the hardware.


Now, Terratec did get a beating over its driver software but this has been corrected and... the software the used originally for the UI (supplied by Cyberlink) was chronic and changing to Home Cinema (latest version 4.98) has made things much better. Believe me, I did contemplate sending my card back to Germany until I found out about the driver fix but now I wouldn't be without it

If I could find all the bits for my Nebula I would be quite willing to sell it. The software tries to be all things to all men and doesn't do one thing exceptionally well.
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I could have sworn the Nebula has 2 tuners!

Any links to the UI or something? What's the remote like?
 
:( The Digitv has only one tuner, but you can add more PCI or USB as slaves.

The best place to have a look at the UI is the Nebula website - http://www.nebula-electronics.com, where you can download it and play with it even without a tuner.

The remote used to be an actual One-4-All remote but they have changed to their own proprietary version that isn't bad, the card has a dongle that the receiver attaches to and you can place it for best reception.
 
Baron_Samedi said:
:( The Digitv has only one tuner, but you can add more PCI or USB as slaves.

The best place to have a look at the UI is the Nebula website - http://www.nebula-electronics.com, where you can download it and play with it even without a tuner.

The remote used to be an actual One-4-All remote but they have changed to their own proprietary version that isn't bad, the card has a dongle that the receiver attaches to and you can place it for best reception.
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Baron, I'm on about the Terratec's UI as for £60 delivered it looks tasty :D
 
lloydsj said:
So just to confirm a few things here...

Which of these cards you've mentioned are windows media center MCE compatible? I presume that's ideally what I'd need.

Is there a disadvantage to the usb versions?

Whats the best MCE compatible software available? I just want to be able to easily find and record tv programs. I won't be using it to actually watch tv as my plasma has freeview built in. My machine is currently running XP Pro SP2, but if it would be much better I might consider purchasing Windows Media Center?
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Baron... fancy answering these??? :D
 
lloydsj said:
Baron... fancy answering these??? :D
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I will ;)

They're all MCE compatible, either the Terratec or nebula would be spot on.

USB versions usually lack a few features and are powered off USB(had to state the obvious!). Unless you plan of swapping it around often, pci is recommended.

Alternative to MCE is: Myth TV.

Here's a comparison: http://tvease.net/wiki/index.php?title=Mythtv_vs_windows

Hope that helped :)
 
Nebula for me is absolutely brilliant - I've no idea what alternatives are like, other than a DVB-T hauppauge card I had some time ago which was terrible. The software and interface have all been pleasant to use, rock solid, crash-free etc.

Nebula works on dual screens setup (tried using both Nvidia's dual screen view and also ultramon).
 
I have been looking at the terratec card for a while too, especially if u say it is only £60 now. So i would like to know what u think of it and a mini review would be great!
 
I've owned the nebula pci version for just over 2 years now. Paid over £100 back in the day :( The software is great and never had any problems with it. Cant compare it to anything other than the hauppage which my mate had and that one i just a complete NO in all areas. Never tried the Terratec though, seems to be getting good opinions on here though.
 
It's arrived and installed, I cant find any channels at all :confused:

Admittedly it's a rubbish aerial but it worked for me in the past!

I'll be holding off the review for awhile til I get down to the problem of this.
 
Paul -C- said:
You can also use Media Portal software if you have a digi card. It's free :)
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The boy wonder has been using this software for a couple of days and he gives it a BIG thumbs up :D . It has found ALL the channels and has a much better UI than the default hauppauge one. looks just like Media Centre.

Cheers for the heads up Paul, topman .
 
I heard a lot of people had terrible problems with the Terratec

I have owned A compro T-300 ( piece of ***** )

A Nova-T from Huappage ( brilliant card I still use on my main PC )

And a Nova-t 500 Huappage ( Dual freeview tuners I use in my PVR PC connected to my TV )

I have had about 10 TV cards in total , most of the early ones were analogue ones , the Nova-T 500 card I rate very highly I use GB PVR along with it to do the whole pvr thing ( you can set recording using a web interface from anywhere uging the free gb pvr program )
 
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