Marlowe Posted April 23, 2012 Report Share Posted April 23, 2012 Well, you can't get much more off-topic on an Airsoft forum than this... Due to rapidly escalating costs and general lack of use of the non-free channels, I've recently kicked Virgin TV into touch. I mainly only watch the 'free to view' channels, but do like viewing them in HD, and the ability to record from a programme list. I am now faced with deciding whether to buy a HD PVR (probably Humax, unless someone knows of a better brand) or get a TV Tuner card for the HTPC which we use for viewing movies / anime / downloaded TV, and am torn between both options, as well as unsure whether to go for Freesat (DVB-S) or Freeview (DVB-T). I thought on a popular forum such as this there'd be a good chance of finding people examples of most if not all of the possible options, so I'd be grateful for opinions: To summarise: Freesat or Freeview? Dedicated PVR or TV Tuner Card for HTPC? Factors for consideration: I have a satellite already installed from from a previous Sky installation. I do not have an aerial but am happy to buy & install if the benefits are superior. I have a 2 month old HTPC system running on a reasonable (Core I3 CPU, 4GB ram, dedicated Radeon card) specification. I don't mind additional expense up front, but would like to avoid excessive monthly bills - e.g. electricity usage - where possible. I would prefer to go for the option which gets the best TV image, especially in HD. I intend to go for a multiple tuner system with the ability to recorded one channel while watching another. Cheers for your advice guys - It's much appreciated. Link to post Share on other sites
hitmanNo2 Posted April 23, 2012 Report Share Posted April 23, 2012 Well, seeing as you have the dish already, go for Freesat. I believe it's considered superior to Freeview and has many more SD channels and at least one more HD channel than Freeview. I personally think the picture is better on Freesat. I know numerous people with the Humax Freesat setup and they are happy with them. As for PVR vs TV tuner card. I would definitely say go for the dedicated PVR in the Freesat box. It's been a few years since I had TV card but I found the quality of the recording a bit meh. The compression/coding whatever didn't seem to be too economic, eating up many GBs on my HDD. Also, the interface was nowhere near as nice with something that the Humax boxes. Recordings with non descriptive file names in a poor file structure. I'm sure that technology has moved on since then but I can't imagine it gets close to the polished experience of a Freesat box. Link to post Share on other sites
Marlowe Posted April 23, 2012 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2012 Thanks; that's exactly the short of reply I was hoping for. Link to post Share on other sites
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