Need suggestion for cheap SD capture hardware

[jughead]

Hi everyone, my cable company gave me a good deal to get me to "uncut the cord" for local channels and I now have a Standard Def cable box in addition to my OTA/HDHR setup. I thought I had everything I needed but have discovered that none of my old Hauppauge cards (PVR-150,250 and 500) will work with 4GB of RAM (how crazy!).

I'm looking for a recommendation for a capture card or device, internal or external (internal preferred), only needs to be Standard Def (S-vid or composite) and does not need a tuner, obviously, since I will have it hooked to the cable box. Do you have any suggestions that are known to work well with SageTV? I'd like to keep it cheap.

Thanks!

[Stu Gare]

PVR 350 works with more Ram on Windows 7. although mine stopped working when moving from win7 to win10 , lip sync issues and jerky video playback.

[Fuzzy]

A used HD-PVR model 1212 may still be your best option, and allow you to upgrade to an HD box if you feel the need down the road. It's got S-Video or Composite input, and it would give you very high quality h.264 compression, as opposed to the MPEG-2 of the PVR-xxx cards.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jughead

Hi everyone, my cable company gave me a good deal to get me to "uncut the cord" for local channels and I now have a Standard Def cable box in addition to my OTA/HDHR setup. I thought I had everything I needed but have discovered that none of my old Hauppauge cards (PVR-150,250 and 500) will work with 4GB of RAM (how crazy!).

Why would you record off a standard def, analog output, IR controlled box rather than getting pristine, digital, OTA? If I was going to buy anything it would be more digital/OTA tuners.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Why would you record off a standard def, analog output, IR controlled box rather than getting pristine, digital, OTA? If I was going to buy anything it would be more digital/OTA tuners.

I read it as he is adding this in addition to his OTA tuners, to add cable channels.

[jughead]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Why would you record off a standard def, analog output, IR controlled box rather than getting pristine, digital, OTA? If I was going to buy anything it would be more digital/OTA tuners.

I will be using it in addition to the OTA to fill a few holes in my lineup. I plan to set tuner priority to the OTA wherever possible and the SD box will cover channels I can't pull in OTA.

I had already cut the cord a few years ago but my cable co. offered me the locals in SD for $5/mo, no box rental fee. Plus free HBO for a year, CSPAN and a few others I don't get OTA. I figured what the hell, I already have all the hardware I need if I stick to SD so the plan was to do it for free.

Also in my area I can't get ABC without adding a second, completely different antenna, which I'm not going to buy bc it's the ONLY channel you need it for. SD is better than none!

If/when the HDHR Prime is supported, I'll probably pick one up but the plan was to do this free until reading about the 4GB limit on all my existing capture cards.

I have the PVR-500 card installed but didn't bother to install the drivers etc once I read about the 4GB. Is it worth trying? Hearing that the 350 works (I use Win 7 64bit btw) makes me wonder if it might as they both appear in the same list at the bottom of THIS page and the 350 is older than the 150/500 I think?

Thanks for the suggestions. The 1212 does seem like the one to go with if I do have to drop a few bucks into this.

Thanks!

[jughead]

Having a cable tv account will also get me HBO and the other channels on my Roku, I believe in HD

I haven't been able to get the SageTV Roku channel to work, I think bc of having the latest Java on my server. Is that something that the open source version can/will address btw?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by jughead

Having a cable tv account will also get me HBO and the other channels on my Roku, I believe in HD

I haven't been able to get the SageTV Roku channel to work, I think bc of having the latest Java on my server. Is that something that the open source version can/will address btw?

That isn't an issue with Sage being open sourced or not, it's an issue with the Jetty plugin using an old version of Jetty that doesn't run completely correct on Java 8. That needs to be updated on the Jetty plugin, not in sage - so it's actually something that could have been fixed at any time, open source or not - if someone was willing to take it on.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by jughead

If/when the HDHR Prime is supported, I'll probably pick one up but the plan was to do this free until reading about the 4GB limit on all my existing capture cards.

The HDHR Prime works very well with Sage - it is every bit as stable as the PVR-150's were. You do need to install an extra piece of free software to make them work with Sage (either SageDCT or PrimeNet Encoder), but this is pretty painless.

Also, Sage will not work with channels that are flagged as "Copy Once" or "Copy Never" over Cable Card due to DRM restrictions. It is unlikely that this will ever change.

With Comcast, this is only a problem for premium channels. With Verizon FiOS, this is only a problem for premium channels and Fox affiliates. With Time Warner only the local channels will work via cable card. If you have some other cable provider, you will need to investigate compatibility.

[jughead]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

That isn't an issue with Sage being open sourced or not, it's an issue with the Jetty plugin using an old version of Jetty that doesn't run completely correct on Java 8. That needs to be updated on the Jetty plugin, not in sage - so it's actually something that could have been fixed at any time, open source or not - if someone was willing to take it on.

That is what I was trying to ask, if it was something that we had been waiting to be able to access the code to fix, or if it was something external like a plugin. Thank you for clarifying!

Originally Posted by Tiki

The HDHR Prime works very well with Sage

Shoot, sorry for the confusion but I meant the one which does OTA along with compressing the files.