# Want an opinion on a piece of hardware



## Draconis (Mar 16, 2007)

I have been debating on adding a FTA card to my PC and found this one.

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-4000
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_hvr4000.html

Has anyone used it? If you have, what is your opinion of the card?

Also, would this card work if attached to a DirecTV dish or would I need to mount a second dish?


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

First it will depend of front-end SW what you'll use, OS, existing drivers.
Analog tuner is obsolete in one year; terrestrial will not work in US; DVB-S will works with your 18" dish/regular LNBF for NASA and some Ku sats; DVB-S2 available on C-band, ie big dish required.


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## Draconis (Mar 16, 2007)

Hmmm... 

My system meets the requirements (see sig), but I had forgotten about the analog TV tuner going kaput next year. 

(Guess I deserve a boot to the head for that one)

It also has a HDTV tuner so that is not a total loss. 

Wonder if it will work with Doug's program for monitoring the software downloads on the DirecTV satellites?


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

No. For the type of monitoring you'll need TH1020a or Skywalker-1.

That 'HDTV" word used as marketing term - those card have nothing common with video format/compression.
Relevant prarmeters are QPSK/8PSK/-S or -S2/SR/FEC.


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## Draconis (Mar 16, 2007)

Oh well, I only have 1 PCI slot left open and wanted to have a card that did both satellite and HDTV. 

I'll look into the other two cards, thanks for the input.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Oh, you mean ATSC.


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## PTown (Aug 18, 2007)

Probably cheaper and more reliable to separate the 2 anyways.


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