Need a good "cheap" and reliable USB DTV reciever stick!

jpe20

Hi folks,

Hope u can help me out on this. I need a USB Digital TV stick/unit that is good at receiving signals (ie tuning to digital channels). Anyone know of a decent cheap one ie around 30quid (NOVA T cards are supposed to be good but I guess they aint USB). Full technical reasons for this request given in the PS.

Hope u can reccomend something handy which is cheap including the P&P. Also by the way I do also need a cheap Windows MCE remote control.

Thanks in advance

Jules

PS .... reason for this is that I live in a fringe area for freeview reception such that my terratec 2400i DT card tunes in loads of frequencies it don't need upon setting up the TV settings in MCE 2005 (Rollup 2+patch). This tuning problem results in Live TV and recordings generally failing after 5mins or so. Editing the channel line up (MCE scans in 264 channels/services but selects 64 for availability automatically). This ends up in me having a couple of entries for BBC1 for eg. at differing MHz. Also the information in the channel guide is inprecise (rounding off to 3digits) leading to a couple of channels listed with the same frequency!!!! (I am aware of "offset" settings +-168kHz which are lost in this imprecise reporting within MCE). I know the exact transmission frequencies of my regional transmitter (WINTER HILL) so that I can select in the settings menu the alternative channels at +1MHz. This drastically improves the "no signal rece..." scenario from roughly 5mins to an hour or so with infreqent stuttering.

From reading many techie forums I have discovered a fix to this problem using another digital TV card/stick to select and tune the frequencies during a setup scan hence somehow avoiding duplicate/incorrect channel entries in the MCE TV setup. Hence the request for a cheap card/stick just for tuning purposes.

As for for getting my Terractec 2400i card working normally I have tried the following ....

(1) Installing lasted BDA drivers (260)
(2) Inserting a new key in the registry setting for Digital TV services/TVAutoTune/TS44-0 and adding sub-keys relating to my WinterHill transmitter frequencies (DWORD entries etc) ... this is one registry "hack" which seems to have worked for some [seems to me with this you are limiting the channel scan under the UK region (44) to the channels u specified in the registry under the TS44-0 key ..... BUT this did NOT work for me and I can only assume that RollUp2 + patches have botched my efforts!!!] . All this paragraph is essentially talking about the MANUAL correction of TV channel frequencies you limit the MCE software to search for when doing a setup scan hence avoiding duplicates (which I assume have slightly differing frequencies!).

There is another registry hack related to copying (exporting) settings from an independent DTV card which seems to work as well and essential for those intending to use an additional tuner to the terratec dual tuner.

Thats it for now way too technical for people in here I guess!!!!

Any1 else having trouble with MCE then let me know especially if you are experiencing similar problems.

wolfman

I've got the Freecom DVB-T USB device. It's on Amazon for £31:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000ALAWQ6/026-3197711-2957259?v=glance&n=560798

I've found it to be great, they've just released BDA drivers too, so I'm using GB PVR with it.

Reception for me is very good, although I live in London (Zone 2). I've heard hit and miss comments about reception, but as I said it's fine for me and I'm using the bog standard little aerial that comes with it (not our roof aerial).

jpe20

As you say wolfman the reception on the freecom model u mention is a little hit and miss I may hang on for a few more suggestions. Having said that I am using a shared rooftop aerial with a variable booster (up to 20db) so I will probably be ok with it. 31quid is roughly the price I was thinking of .. after all I have spent probably 20hrs or so reading up and fettling in this damn terratec 2400i card so my patience is wearing a bit thin now!! Just that the way the case is and the lie of the power cables would make it difficult to go with the alternative of 2 seperate PCI DTV cards.

Anyhow time for bed and hide all my beer cans!!!!

Jules

wolfman

The thing about it being hit and miss depends. People make a lot of comments about poor reception, but often you don't know where they are, what aerial they are using, their technical skills etc...

From reading through the Amazon comments:

The Aerial - some people complain about this as if it should provide amazing reception. For me it works fine, but it can never compare to a proper aerial or roof aerial. It is after all an aerial effectively designed for travelling purposes, and the whole package is £30 so you can't expect too much.

Software - Not really applicable. They've released BDA drivers so you can use any software you want. GbPvr or MediaPortal are two great free apps. The default software is ok, but nothing in comparison.

As a portable product, it's probably worth checking out other options first. But if you have a decent roof setup, or live in good reception it should be fine.