I have Windows MCE 2005 along with an avermedia A180 HD Tuner, but I need a standard tuner next.

Heard great things about Hauppage and ATI, but I want opinions from people that have PVR's and the cards they use.

It must have an hardware encoding/decoding feature, that is my only requirement.

Discuss.

 

I know there are some of you in here, :cough:Grifter:cough:

 

I have an ATI TV Wonder Pro and I regret the hell out of it. When I first installed the card the bundled media center software was so unstable it was almost useless, constantly crashing, sometimes requiring a reboot. I could never actually trust the thing to actually record a program without crashing. I found out there was an issue with hyperthreaded CPU's and download a hotfix from MS (which I belive is now bundled in SP2 but I never checked). I have downloaded at least 7-8 new updates to ATI's Media center software, unistalled and reinstalled the drivers and software countless time and I still don't really trust it, although it is more stable now, but still crashes on occasion.

I also had a sound issue thorugh the onboard sound (underwater sounding, just poor recorded audio, even with 3.2GB an hour MPG2 DVD quality recording) and I upgraded to an Audigy 2ZS and the sound improved but the program could no longer mute the audio when playing or recording. I tried the newest Creative Labs and ATI drivers for both the tuner card and sound card and I could never resolve that issue. I had to remember to mute the speakers before leaving or you could hear what it was recording, and if it crashed when recording, the audio would continue till the program was killed manually. I finally just basically gave up and just got the HD-PVR system from my local cable company and I just use that. I sometimes turn the tuner on if I'm at my computer and I just want to see what's on TV but I never use it to record anything anymore.

Also, their bundled Programing Guide is horrible. It will only download 5 days in advance and could not be automated and without updates, it wouldn't know when a show was on to automatically record it. The program eventually crashed and refused to download new updates from the web with a database error and I never bothered to find the CD and reinstall it. I was planning to transfer the card to an AthonXP based shuttle system and install the MythTV software on a Linux installation but then I just decided to go with the cable companies box and I've been happy. I can't fault the hardware, it's been good to me but their Media Center software is atrocious. I wouldn't even recommend it to someone I didn't like.

 

Thanks for the advice Andy, I went with a happauge MCE 500 Dual tuner card. I should be getting it today.

I am also going to start building my surround sound system next weekend, I got the wood last weekend and should be ordering the speakers and crossovers sometime next week when I get back from my ski trip

I will keep everyone updated on the progress of the theater, it seems to be going great so far.