Dear TheGreenButton.com folks,

 

AVerMedia Technologies, Inc is committed to support more product with Clear QAM support for Media Center and I proud to announce new product to you AVerTV Hybrid Volar Max.

This tuner is USB Stick form factor, very light and portable and this Tuner received highest award on CES 2008 and USB 2.0 Certified too.

 

 This tuner support QAM in Vista VMC or XP MCE (both x32 and x64 bit) using an original drivers  and same QAM Plug-In for Microsoft Media Center (both XP based and Vista based)

You can find more information about AVerTV Hybrid Volar Max on following link: http://www.aver.com/mpd/hybrid_volar_max.html. and its available from AVerMedia Secure E-Store for $79.99.

Please  run AVer_ClearQAM.exe to scan for Digital Channels (Please notice that with this Plug in you can only watch Unencrypted "Clear" QAM Channels, not your Premium Channels. Some of the channels that Plug in will recognized will be Encrypted by your Cable Company and  you cannot see then, you will have to manually removed them from MCE TV Guide. Also you can manually rename Clear QAM Channels in MCE/VMC TV Guide.

 

Please download Vista MCE Plug-In from the following FTP:

ftp.aver.com/Max

user name: beta

password: betatest

 

Good luck, and AVerMedia is looking forward to hearing your VALUABLE FEEDBACK.

You can send us your feedback to the following email address: beta@aver.com

Best Regards,

Felix Kolotinsky

Product Manager

AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.

 

Please keep in mind that AVerMedia Technologies will not be held responsible for the Beta version software.

Felix Kolotinsky
Product Manager
AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.

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Felix Kolotinsky
Product Manager
AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.

Has anyone tried this yet? Last I heard, VMC does not support QAM except using the HD Homerun.

dirkoneill:

Has anyone tried this yet? Last I heard, VMC does not support QAM except using the HD Homerun.

There is indeed Clear QAM support in MCE and VMC using the following hardware:

Silicondust HDHomeRum - ~$169.99

AverMedia AverTV Combo PCIe X1 M780 - ~$69 -to- ~$109

AverMedia AverTV Bravo Hybrid PCIe X1 H788 - ~$57.50 (~$49.99 -to- ~$69.99)

And now apparently,…

AverMedia AVerTV Hybrid Volar Max - ~$79.99

Functionally speaking these devices are very similar in the feature set they provide with respect to QAM. However, the HDHomeRun is afflicted with a troublesome and as of yet uncorrected 68 channel map limit whereas the AverMedia products don’t seem to have any such crippling limitation.

I have both a Silicondust HDHomeRum and 2x AverMedia AverTV Combo PCIe X1 M780 cards. I receive approximately ~140 QAM channels in the clear and I find the 68 channel map limit of the HDHomeRun to be very problematic. Users should not have to spend time chopping out and culling channels from their lineup (channels they pay for mind you) to accommodate the limitations of the hardware / software. Likewise users should not have to cut out even more channels to an already truncated lineup to accommodate newly added channels by their cable company,….due to the limitations of the tuner hardware / software.

 

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

Is it possible to use the avermedia qam card and use a different card for normal cable box view.  My dad gets many of his channels qam, but still needs the cable box in media center to watch hbo, etc.

 

-jocal

I wonder if I can use this as my ONLY tuner in MCE2005? I would like to remove my analog tuner and use just this device.

jocal:

Is it possible to use the avermedia qam card and use a different card for normal cable box view.  My dad gets many of his channels qam, but still needs the cable box in media center to watch hbo, etc.

 

-jocal

 

Microsoft Media Center in general allows official support for two analog tuners and two digital tuners. This would allow for quad tuning simultaneously. So yes, your father can use a standard analog tuner connected to a cable box to receive all the cable channels obtainable that he subscribes to including premium pay channels like HBO, MAX, Showtime and so on. In addition to that, he can use a digital OTA ATSC or QAM tuner to receive digital channels. Such a setup would allow for simultaneous recording.

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

thewarm:

I wonder if I can use this as my ONLY tuner in MCE2005? I would like to remove my analog tuner and use just this device.

Media Center Edition 2005 requires the installation of an analog tuner in order to use a digital tuner. Vista Media Center does not have this requirement. Since the AVerTV Hybrid Volar Max (Analog/ATSC/QAM), does indeed have an analog component it may be detected and satisfy the analog tuner requirement so a discrete analog tuner may not be necessary. However, since the Volar Max is a Hybrid tuner the analog and digital components will more then likely not be useable simultaneously and conflicts will likely occur if that ever happens.

Its probably better to add the Volar Max to your existing tuner rather then trying to replace it in MCE 2K5 which would afford you dual simultaneous analog / digital functionality. In VMC replacing your existing tuner would probably work fine if you have no interest in setting up and using analog TV.

 

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

I'm wondering what Microsoft intends to do (if anything) after Feb 2009? Will they still require the (then defunct) analog tuner?

MCE Rollup #3?

I was under the impression that the deadline referred to broadcast analog and as such “cable”, for example, would be largely unaffected. As for those users reliant on OTA analog, a digital converter box can be easy and relatively cheaply acquired. I myself have two $40 coupons for digital converter boxes sitting right here.

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

Will this tuner work for both QAM and Analog depending on the channel?  Like would I be able to watch a QAM channel and then change to a regular analog station using this?  This would make sense for my vista laptop if it does.

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Warren - The OML Slacker

According to the comparison doc :

http://www.aver.com/mpd/H826_Comparison_Table.pdf

The AVerTV Hybrid Volar MAX (H826) uses Software Compression (with software encoder) so its analog tuner likely uses more CPU cycles and yields lower quality then a hardware encoder based analog tuner. Furthermore, “Hybrid” usually implies that only one tuner “analog” or “digital” will work at any given time. The presence of only one RF connector is usually another good indication that only “analog” or “digital” will function at any given time,…..not both.

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Q6600 | Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R | Corsair XMS2 DDR2 2x1GB + OCZ DDR2 2x512MB | eVGA 8800GT | 2x 650GB HDD | LG GGW-H20L | 2x AVerTV Combo PCIe | Coolermaster 650 Extreme SLI PSU | XBox 360 | XBox 360 HD DVD Drive | Vista Home Premium | WHS | Hauppauge HD PVR

Octavean,

You are correct, AVerTV Hybrid Volar Max and AVerTV Hybrid Bravo PCIe, are both software encoders, with single RF inputs. Both of them have Vista Premium Certified Drivers with x32 and x64 drivers avaliable now, and for Windows XP Certified with  x32 and x64 drivers avaliable now.

AVerMedia designed own software encoder, and it's compatible to Hardware Encoders, I tested on several differnt PC and CPU utilization on Analog is arround %30 in average. All main stream PC will handle this well, without compramize on quality and stability.

Either VMC or MCE, will recordnize them as "two" tuners, one analog and one HD. However you can not record two channels at once, like on M780, because of the Hybrid tuner.

On another side, both of them support FM in MCE/VMC.
And of course both of them are QAM ready :-)

Beside that AVerTV Hybrid Volar Max is USB Pen drive size (USB 2.0 Certified), very light and portable and end users can use in desktop or laptops.

Felix K,

Product Manager

AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.

 

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Felix Kolotinsky
Product Manager
AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.

carazy1:

Will this tuner work for both QAM and Analog depending on the channel?  Like would I be able to watch a QAM channel and then change to a regular analog station using this? 

Felix , I'm curious about this also. Are analog and digital channels in the same channel line up or will you need to switch the source tuner? Same question in Vista Media Center (with QAM plugin)

And I have a USB tuner for OTA, will this conflict with the Volar Max? Same question in VMC.

Also I read some reviewer on Newegg said that recording from VHS or S-Video is not supported
 in this. Is this true?

This one is a long shot, but I have TotalMedia3 which came with my current tuner. I think I'm one of maybe 2 people who actually like it. Will Volar Max work with it for QAM? The program does have an option to scan for ATSC Cable but I know that doesn't mean it'll work with this tuner. (my current tuner only does OTA ATSC)

My hopes are to use this tuner for cable (analog/digital) and keep my current for OTA. Eventually in VMC too.
Doable?

Thank you
  
 

Great news  Felix,
I will definitely try this one.

I received my new Volar Max this weekend.  I have an E1505 running Vista Ultimate.  I have tried to use the QAM several times, though continue to get a blue screen.  I have updated my drivers and it is still not working.  The analog is working, though that is not really the reason I purchased this.  I hope AVerMedia updates the drivers on this product.

Doug