Is the Hauppauge HD PVR the only option for HD?

[saulin]

Hi People I have been using SageTV to record from my Satellite receiver for about 4 months now and I love it. It has taken me a lot of time to get the recordings to a acceptable image quality though, specially when SageTV just gives me a very white picture and I have to manually set the color/sharpness/hue/contrast/saturation in SageTV in order to get color. I'm using this Tuner: Asus ViXS Combo-210E NTSC ATSC TV Tuner with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

Let's just say that I have spent about 15 hours tweaking the SageTV colors, and my TV colors and my PC color settings. In fact if I use the same TV Input in another device that I use for SageTV the colors look just wrong but it looks good for SageTV.

I also tried many encoders and I settled with Arcsoft TME since that one gave me almost zero stuttering but not the best quality.



Anyways

Recently I upgraded to a HD receiver and this tuner still gets the HD channels in 480i through the S-Video connection but of course the quality is not even close to what it should be in 1080i.

I have looked for HD capture cards and it seems that Hauppauge HD PVR is pretty much the best option right now for HD capturing. Is there any cheaper/better option out right now?

I'm thinking that being able to capture SD through component will also give me a better image quality for SD recording so I'm really considering the Hauppauge HD PVR but I was hopping to only spent around $100 for a HD capture card. Not $200

[jptheripper]

With satellite you have 2 options, the HD PVR and the HD PVR Colossus (internal, same vendor). Or you can go the r5000 route, but that is out of your budget.

[saulin]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

With satellite you have 2 options, the HD PVR and the HD PVR Colossus (internal, same vendor). Or you can go the r5000 route, but that is out of your budget.

That HD PVR Colossus looks like it is what I want. It has HDMI in, that would carry both sound/video right? Plus would give me the best picture possible I would think. I have a FTA HD receiver, I would think it has un-encrypted HDMI. Is this card fully supported by SageTV?



***Edit***

I was going to push the buy button on the Hauppauge Colossus but people here seem to have the issue where recordings seem to be playing back kind of in slow motion and no one seems to have figured out the issue yet. I think I'll see if one store here locally can price match the Hauppauge HD PVR.

[GemZombie]

While the it has HDMI in, it will only record HDMI that is not secured. Everything coming from a set-top cable or satellite box is going to be secured. Basically you can record video games on your HDMI. You'll want to use the Component in, which is not secure and can be recorded.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by GemZombie

While the it has HDMI in, it will only record HDMI that is not secured. Everything coming from a set-top cable or satellite box is going to be secured. Basically you can record video games on your HDMI. You'll want to use the Component in, which is not secure and can be recorded.

This is not true allot of directv boxes and sattelite boxes are not encrypted I record audio and video from my dish 211 boxes and there are allot of different boxes on directv it works with as well.

[saulin]

I'm not 100% sure but I think FTA Satellite Boxes might be un-encrypted as well.

Someone just pointed me to this thing as well

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

It looks awesome but I'm not sure that it works with SageTV. I heard it creates huge files and it needs extra software fo the encoding and since is all done through software is very CPU intensive.

***Edit***

After some research it seems like the Hauppauge HD-PVR is the best one to get. Here are my next questions.

Which encoders are best to use with the Hauppauge HD-PVR to get the smoothest playback SD and HD. Which drivers are the best to use as well. Hopefully that should save me a lot of time when setting it up. Also if someone can post their values for their contrast/sharpness/hue/saturation etc... under SageTV video calibration would be much apreciated in case that SageTv tries to use my current settings since it never picked up those settings for me on my current Tuner Card.

[FriscoJohn]

If you are watching FTA satellite you'll be much better off with a PC card satellite receiver such as the Prof 7301 (search for my posts re this on the forum). This wlll feed the digital HD satellite signals direct to SageTV for recording. You'll get a better picture as there is no need for down-converting to analog and then up-converting to digital again (which is what you'll be doing if you go the Hauppauge route.) Plus, the Prof 7301 is a LOT cheaper and trouble free in my experience. In contrast, I have to reset my HD-PVR every week or so to restore it to functionality--a common experience among HD-PVR owners.