Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I've been using this card for about a month now, and it's been working very consistently. I replaced a two-year-old dual tuner with this because the old one was crapping out on me regularly, so I couldn't be assured my recordings would occur as scheduled. The new card hasn't failed once yet.
A benefit of this card is lower CPU utilization while recording video. I haven't evaluated that specifically, but I haven't noticed any issues. But then, I never noticed any issues with the old card either.
Various postings on Internet forums express concern about zero- or one-minute recordings; that is, you end up with two recordings in your recorded TV list; one with the show you asked for, and the other a very short one. I notice this too. However, the manufacturer seems to be good about issuing driver updates and the consensus seems to be that this will be fixed.
Be sure you have a 1-bit PCI Express slot to put this card into. I didn't check before buying, but I lucked out and had one available. My Dell motherboard shiped with a 16-bit PCI Express slot (occupied) and a 1-bit PCI Express slot (unoccupied). The rest are regular PCI slots. Without this slot you're dead in the water.
Setup is a little tricky, at least with Media Center. It turns out that even though the breakout cable has S-Video inputs, you're supposed to select "Composite" instead of "S-Video." If you select "S-Video," you get a fuzzy black-and-white picture. I thought something was wrong with the card until I accidentally tried the other setting and the picture was perfect.
The other oddity is that when you select your input, you have "Composite 1" and "Composite 2" choices for each tuner, but when you get to the second tuner input selection, you need to pick "Composite 1" AGAIN and it works; you get the second tuner's signal. If you pick "Composite 2" then you'll get a blank screen with an error something like "Tuner Not Available." I found this out when I tried putting my old dual-tuner card in and it had only one composite input to select for each tuner--much more intuitive. That's what made me think of trying "Composite 1" for each tuner on the new card.
By the way, the instructions didn't provide any specific instructions in this regard; they just say to follow the on-screen instructions.
So since my old card had a more intuitive setup than this new card, and since I wasted a couple hours trying various setup options to try to get the card to work, I'm giving this card four stars instead of five. It would've been three stars if it had taken 10 minutes longer and caused me to miss recording "24."
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Product Description:
CONSUMER ALERT:This television receiver has only an analog broadcast tuner and will require a converter box after June 12, 2009, to receive over-the-air broadcasts with an antenna because of the Nation's transition to digital broadcasting. Analog-only TVs should continue to work as before with cable and satellite TV services, gaming consoles, VCRs, DVD players, and similar products. For more information, call the Federal Communications Commission at 1-888-225-5322 (TTY: 1-888-835-5322) or visit the Commission's digital television website at: www.dtv.gov Ever wonder why PC owners love Windows XP Media Center Edition? Here is one reason to jump for joy. Use your PC as a TV or video recorder. VistaView Saber 2020 turns your computer into a dual PVR.The dual tuner gives you complete flexibility to watch and record TV. You can record all your favorite shows, watch them when you want to or record them to disc. You can record 2 shows simultaneously or watch one show live while you record the other. Advanced Hardware Encoding gives you the finest picture without slowing your PC down.The Saber 2020s hardware encoder can handle 2 streams simultaneously so your computers CPU remains free for other uses. The Saber 2020 is also a dual FM radio tuner.Listen, Record, Pause live FM radio.
The PCIe (PCI express) bus ensures video quality. With PCIe, other cards in the computer can not interfere with the video transport to the computer.Since the tuner gets a dedicated channel to the CPU, other cards can not interfere bystealing' bus cycles. The Saber 2020 comes with Microsoft MCE certified BDA drivers, which work flawlessly with Microsoft Media Center Edition. This combination of features makes Saber 2020 the TV tuner card of choice for both novices and power users.The onboard video encoder means that you can use older computers with XP and leading software packages to provide all the capabilities of the newer M
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