Okay, I understand the 'only two guides in the US' mallarkey, but basically in the UK the 30 or so channels included on the Freeview package are also on the Sky Digital package... so I why would I need two guides?

And if it does need two guides, surely if changing my international settings to US enables the US Online Spotlight Options and (more importantly) the 'Movies' functionality of the TV section, isn't there a possibility it will also enable the dual tuner type functionality? Perhaps I'll rebuild the kids MCE machine and add an analogue tuner in there just too see

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Cheers, tekno If it ain't broke... . TRY HARDER!

http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=27&MessageID=110919

Check out this thread and play, we need someone with the gear, and the access to the channels, to do it.

I may have missed it, but has any tried the following:

1 evga NVTV Dual Tuner card
and
1 Hauppaugge PVR500-MCE

I currently have a NVTV Dual Tuner and want to add another Dual Tuner and it seems like the Hauppaugge is a better card.

thanks.

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Vista Ultimate with TV Pack
Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.2GHz (OC'd to 2.9) / 4 Gigs Ram
c: 80 Gig d: 500 Gig SATA
Tuners: PVR-500 / HDHomeRun x 2 / WinTV 1600
Extenders: DMA-2200 / DMA-2100 x 2

Linksys V1 extender (for sale..anyone interested?)

I currently have a Dual NVTV and an MCE 500, plus an A180

Im having some issues mainly with CPU usage.  Tonight I am going to uninstall all codecs then reinstall them.   The recordings come out great though, all 5 of them.

 

Since you have both the NVTV and the 500, do you notice a difference when the recording is with the NVTV vs the 500?

ps.. can a moderator remove the post from mosquito?
"See the bottom of page 2. It has been done with Haupauge DVB-T cards. This ha..."

it keeps coming up as the last post in the thread.

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Vista Ultimate with TV Pack
Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.2GHz (OC'd to 2.9) / 4 Gigs Ram
c: 80 Gig d: 500 Gig SATA
Tuners: PVR-500 / HDHomeRun x 2 / WinTV 1600
Extenders: DMA-2200 / DMA-2100 x 2

Linksys V1 extender (for sale..anyone interested?)

Its been that way since page one I was hoping he would delete it himself.

As to picture quality, truthfully nope no difference at all.

If you would like I can make some test recordings and post them somewhere, say 30 each of the same show, it wont be the same picture but at least the same channel.

I can also give you an HD recording of the same thing.

I will then do a recording of channel 11 (Comcast Fremont, ca cable guide channel) so you can get an idea about the text.

I will try to do this tonight, along with trying to do that Dual tuner with but 1 using HD space thing Ive been thinking of doing.

I think I need more hardware...

MOSQUITO!!! EDIT YOUR POST THAT IS STUCK ON THE END AND HIT DELETE POST!!

Which dual tuner cards work well together? I have a light sponsorship and a bus expander on the way so i'm gonig to see what the breaking point is!!!!!

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

Mike your signature is so annoying, especially when you see it 5 times per page

I have so been waiting for someone to say that. LOL

The following are links to the files Right click and save as.

http://www.mjwii.com/Video/MCE500Coax.dvr-ms

http://www.mjwii.com/Video/MCE500STB.dvr-ms

http://www.mjwii.com/Video/NVTVCOAX1.dvr-ms

http://www.mjwii.com/Video/NVTVCOAX2.dvr-ms

Ok in my opinion the NVTV is as good if not better than the MCE 500, and the CPU usage is less using the NVTV for some reason.

what do you think?

 

Post deleted. I didn't realize it was showing up for everyone that way. Chances are, this one will do the same thing! HA!

I don't currently have access to my MCE machine. I thought XP (non MCE) had an update to allow it to play DVR-MS files. It doesn't work so I'll have to wait.

I'll try it tonight and see what happens.

btw: Amazon has the 500 for 127 so I ordered it. Now I'll have 4 tuners just in time for re-runs ;-)

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Vista Ultimate with TV Pack
Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.2GHz (OC'd to 2.9) / 4 Gigs Ram
c: 80 Gig d: 500 Gig SATA
Tuners: PVR-500 / HDHomeRun x 2 / WinTV 1600
Extenders: DMA-2200 / DMA-2100 x 2

Linksys V1 extender (for sale..anyone interested?)

You may not have an mpeg2 decoder on that machine (I haven't tried to play the videos to know if they work). You can buy just a decoder for WMP at a predetermined microsoft price of $14.95.

Link to the decoder packs: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/windowsxp/dvdplay.aspx

Side note: I ran into http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306331/EN-US/ and it had this interesting command line to see if your decoder has an update. I wonder if this works for MCE and if we should run it time to time. Codecs are always the one thing I can never tell if there are newer versions out

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

It plays fine on my machine at work.

What do you guys think? Which is better?

With those 2 being the only 2 available, with Dual tuners, I am really thinking of buying another NVTV which seemed to work better for me than the MCE500.

Wait at least a week before getting more. computex is where everyone will show off their new hardware. I'm expecting PCI-Express cards out the wazoo. a lot of people have more dual tuners announced but not released yet. nvidia and ati are in what appears to be a media center war. I expect a lot of better tuners, options and video stuff to be shown.

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP