MCE PVR digital tuner question

[Dominic]

hi

i am building a Media centre based on a P4 2.4 shuttle, 512mb etc etc. The question is that of PVR.
i dont really need twin tuner as this is going in the kids playroom initially, once soak tested by the kids i may build one for the lounge to replace the sky plus waste-o-money pvr.

basically i want digital freview for the cbbc channels and also be able to timeshift/record the stuff they watch the plan is to feed the card from my my loft distribution which has a sky signal already in from the rf output of the sky box.
Looking at a few search’s on the here it seems the wintv nova is popular, however, i cant find any reference to MCE certification, i dont want to buy it and not be able to use it with MCE2005. So i looked at the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1300 Media Centre Edition Freeview TV Tuner which is about twice the price, it looks like it comes with the MCe remote etc, but is that it for the extra £40 and the MCE logo.
can i get away with the Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T PCI Freeview TV Tuner as some here seem to imply they are using with MCE, if so would i need to go and get the remote and IR separately ?

any help would be appreciated.

[lisag]

If you want to feed MCE sky, you need an analogue tuner not a digital one. The digital ones are for Freeview. A popular analogue tuner is the Hauppauge 150MCE.

[Dominic]

thanks lisa,

the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1300 does have both analogue and digital.

i guess the limitation of the 150 is that its analogue, and my main requirement is the freeview tuner.

im not too bothered about the sky signal, if i can have that then its not a problem.although thinking about it the sky signal i send to other tv's and a wintv pc card is analogue cos its via an RF signal. its not a feed direct from the lnb.

[Dominic]

hvr 1300 pvr link here

i assume this therefore could do both the freeview and the sky RF /terestrial.

[rdhir]

but remember that you can't do 2 separate sources on MCE 2005 so tis EITHER sky OR Freeview OR Analogue

Cheers

Rajiv

[Dunkwho]

the nova-t is fine for dvb-t freeview decoding\recording\timeshifting in MCE.

Duncan

[Ulink]

Many thanks to Dominic for asking a question I had in his original post:

Looking at a few search’s on the here it seems the wintv nova is popular, however, i cant find any reference to MCE certification, i dont want to buy it and not be able to use it with MCE2005.

On Hauppauge's website it shows two versions of the Nova-T; one with the letters 'MCE'. Does this imply you need the right type? I've looked at a number of online retailers (ebuyer, PCworld) and there's no mention of 'MCE'

Am I worrying about nothing?

[Dominic]

thanks for the replys,

rdhir, by your comments do you mean at any one time it can only be one of the types of tuner, can i configure MC2005 to choose either of the 3 methods and just load that based on wether i want to watch analogue/sky/freeview so long as i have all the cables in place, or have i missed the point.

Dunkwho
when you say the nova-t, you mean the MCE one, can you recomend a good online retailer ?

thanks for the feedback.
sounds like a choice between the 1300 or the nova-t depenindg on my need for the analogue stuff..

[Dominic]

just when i though things were looking simple.. i found

this

and according to this
it looks like MCE2005 supports it, well at least in theory, does anyone have experiance of the satlaite versions, if so are they worth the hassle, i do have a quad lnb with only 2 outputs in use about 5m away from where this machine is gonig to sit, so it could be an option for digital satalite too.

[Dunkwho]

All nova-t cards are supported my MCE. Physically I believe there are 2 versions, the easy way to quickly spot the difference is that one has a single RF input, the other has both an in and an out to allow loopthrough (I've now forgotten which is which, old or new!? ). I know I've got the old type, I actually run drivers written by technotrend (Hauppauge initally rebadged the 1st nova-t version and didn't write the drivers) - that works with mce. The new version also works with MCE with current hauppauge drivers. I understood that the MCE nova-t suffix means that it comes with an MCE remote ... the cards have an IR receiver function (so that you can use them as a PVR without MCE ie with hauppauge's own tv app) - this built in receiver and their MCE remote negates the requirement for a MCE usb IR receiver\remote bundle.

Online retailers - take your pick, I got mine 2nd hand ebuyer, mediapc.tv, rlsuppiles ... had no problems with any of those with my limited number of orders.

Duncan

[Dominic]

duncan

thanks for the info, i will have a look at those sites. just need to make a choice