One of the most popular adjustments I have seen people make to their homebrew PVR's is the addition of a second tuner. Sure once you get your system up and running it seems great – until you realize that the broadcast companies don't always adhere to your personal schedule.
With that in mind, one the easiest fixes to this problem is to put a dual tuner card into your system right from the get go. I've always been a fan of the Hauppauge tuner cards – they tend to be pretty solid for the price, and as luck would have they also manufacture a dual tuner card, the WinTV-PVR-500.
Virtual-Hideout has gone forth and put this card through their tests and they let us know what they find in their two page review. Once you read the review you can decide for yourself whether the cost of the card (about $170) is worth it for the quality and ease of use of a single tuner card.
1. Bottom line. The picture quality isn't that great on live tv but you get 2 tuners.
I personally have owned two of these cards and returned both of them. The quality just never lived up to what some of the other tuners offer from the same company. I currently have a 150 card with absolutely no quality loss. I would suggest getting two 150 cards over 1 500 card to anyone. If you don't have the pci slots to give up there are plenty of usb tuners with better quality than the 500 card. Or you could also get a HDHomerun tuner for about the same cast as a pvr-500 and have two ATSC/QAM tuners.
Posted at 11:51AM on Jan 22nd 2007 by rothgar