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Simon Avery wrote: > James Fidell wrote: > > >> Agreed. IME PC DVB-T cards are far less tolerant of poor signal quality >> than your average freeview box, sometimes to the point where they just >> won't pick up a signal that a freeview box has no trouble with. >> > > "Depends"... > > I've done quite a bit of research on this in my quest to build a decent > home theatre setup. (Postponed for now, can't find any *decent* > software, nor is my purpose built shuttle-based pc quiet or fast enough) > > Tested (under windows, but we're talking about signal strenghts not > drivers) in a very poor signal area (We technically do not have Digital > coverage according to the BBC) > > Generic digitv box. 8/10 - when poor signal artifacts and issues loud > white noise which is acoustically horrible. Occasionally locks up and > needs powercycle. > > Twinhan "Magic Box" usb dvb tuner. 4/10. Need stronger signal than I can > typically achieve. Also locks up after period of use. Drivers horrible. > > Twinhan analogue usb tuner. 5/10. Cheap and nasty. > > Avermedia 777 DVB-T pci. 5/10. Again, very poor with a weak signal. Step > up from the twinhan but not by much. > > Hauppuage Win-TV 2000 pci. 8/10. And the one currently recording quite > well and easily outperforms all the others including the digibox for > coping with a poor signal. > > So yes, most are worse than the most basic set-top box but they don't > need to be. One thing that does hold true for all the above PC tuners is > that they take a *long* time to change channel. Typically 1-5 seconds > between channels. The digibox does it in a fraction of a second. > > btw, anyone wanting to play and building a media PC, there's a lot of > pitfalls. The most notable is the lack of *good* software. Mediaportal > is by far the best I found that wasn't MCE (which costs a fortune to buy > and subscribe), MP is opensource but runs on windows. Linux stuff I had > no joy at all with, geekbox, myth and some others I tried just flat out > refused to work for me. > I luckily got MythTV working although due to the poor signal I couldn't tune much in. My own plans for a MythTV box are on hold at the moment. I haven't got a small enough case and I think the chosen board (Athlon XP 2000 with 512MB memory) might have been a bit too slow too. Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html