[mythtv-users] Tuner Suggestions ?

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 17:39, Greg <greg12866 at nycap.rr.com> wrote:
>   I have a pvr-150 that seems to be getting old and the picture is
> grainy.. I have tried to re-seat it,and make sure all the cables are
> tight and contacts are clean...Nothing seems to improve it... I am
> looking to replace it..
>    We still get analogue from my cable company,are there any duel cards
> available that work?

Thanks to the FCC, there are no longer any "new, in production"
analogue only cards available for sale in the US (you might find
some in surplus stores or on the usual auction sites).  There are
a number of dual analogue/digital cards available, depending on
what types of slots you have in your computer.  There are also
some external USB units.

SInce your email suggests you have TimeWarner as your
cableco, a cablecard device will not be especially useful,
but you may find that those channels that TimeWarner is
sending in analogue are also available in clear QAM, making
a digital card a possibility.

I would check out the MythTV wiki for a list of the supported
analogue cards:
  http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Analog_Hardware_Encoder_Cards
and digital cards:
  http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Digital_Tuner_Cards


In my experience, the PVR-xxx series suffered from failures
due to (probably excessive) heat in my case.  I presume one
or more of the caps used for tuning changed values sufficiently
to prevent a reliable lock on the channel(s).  I kept one alive
for another year or two by shifting it around to have better
airflow (at least some variants of the cards got very hot, the
caps were too hot to touch).  Because the effect of the heat
is cumulative, the used cards are going to be a crap shoot.