Re: MCE and Haupagge Digital

On 12/3/08 22:50, in article Owo2$NJhIHA.2084@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Paul
King" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear all,

I have a spare PC which I want to connect up to my HDTV downstairs. I run
Windows Vista Home Premium Edition but it only has the standard stuff (ie
1GB memory, Sata HDD) but no TV tuner.

I was looking at the Hauppage Digital PCI card as this allows me to view
Freeview channels in the UK.

Would this card integrate with MCE and is it caperble of downloading HD
content to my super TV?

Cheers
Paul

Hauppauge make lots of different TV tuners however none of them as far as I
am aware are called "Hauppauge Digital PCI card".

On the assumption you indeed want a PCI card to use with MCE and that it
should support Freeview (which uses DVB-T) the following Hauppauge products
are suitable :-

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_hvr1300mcekit.html
This is a hybrid card meaning it can do Analogue OR Digital (not both at the
same time, since Media Center does not allow that).

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_hvr1700mckit.html
Same as above except this is for PCI Express slots.

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_novat500.html
This card also looks like it will work with MCE, this one has two DVB-T
tuners meaning you can record two channels at the same time or record one
and watch one. However it does not have analogue, also the included remote
control does not work in Media Center, you would have to use a standard
Media Center remote.

Moving on to the next issue.

You asked is it capable of downloading HD. By that I presume you mean
receiving HD TV broadcasts over Freeview.

The answer to this is that currently there are no HD broadcasts over
Freeview. If/when that does eventually happen it could be done in one of
three ways.

1. It could either be transmitting HD in MPEG2 format over DVB-T (like in
Australia),

2. It could be HD transmitted in H.264 over DVB-T (like the BBC trial last
year)

3. It could be HD transmitted in H.264 over DVB-T2 (as is being proposed but
has never yet been done).

I can confidently state that option 1 will never happen in the UK and
probably not in the whole of Europe. Option 2 is still a possibility and
would theoretically work with these Hauppauage tuners but not currently in
Microsoft Media Centre, this is because Microsoft do not yet support H.264.
Option 3 is what the UK might eventually end up using and this will not work
on these tuners as there are currently no DVB-T2 tuners available.

If when a DVB-T2 tuner becomes available I would expect it to be backwards
compatible.

Note: Any existing Freeview TVs and set-top boxes are all DVB-T and will not
be able to do DVB-T2 either.

.

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