Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner

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AFAIK, this is the only DUAL HD tuner available in this price range. It even has the splitter built in. Every single other dual tuner has ONE analog input and ONE digital (HD) input. Otherwise you'd be stuck buying two seperate tuners and use an external splitter to feed both seperate inputs.

is this a good tuner?

and so you can hook 1 side up to a QAM antenna and get free HD right?

and then the other into the wall and receive basic cable without a cable box? (after you subscribe to basic cable)

It is one or the other with this thing. Check the connections - there is 1 connection for TV and 1 for FM. So you have to take the same connection but will split internal. So if you are recording/watching QAM - both channels have to be QAM. Same for ATSC over the air. You cannot do both simultaneously.

It is one or the other with this thing. Check the connections - there is 1 connection for TV and 1 for FM. So you have to take the same connection but will split internal. So if you are recording/watching QAM - both channels have to be QAM. Same for ATSC over the air. You cannot do both simultaneously.

but so can you receive basic cable without a cable box with this thing?

I've had this model for a couple months now in a HTPC and it's a fine card, especially for this price. Recording 2 channels at once is really nice. Recommend you get the version with the IR remote packaged with the tuner card (some don't come with the remote). Also, be advised that if you are only receiving over the air digital TV broadcasts via antenna (e no cable, etc.) and use Windows media center, the on screen TV guide won't show the subchannel listings. This is a windows problem that Microshaft really needs to fix- but won't. If you're using cable, this should work great for you also.

I hear this thing struggles with tuning QAM within VMC.

This card doesn't struggle with QAM in VMC. VMC doesn't support QAM by default and once you do get what you need to get QAM on VMC its the VMC software that its not great at mapping channels.

I have this in my HTPC. Works great. Doesn't seem to talk the same version of MPEG2 as my ATI motherboard: latest ATI drivers, when they install (which is not easy, but that's another story), lead to garbled images and all kinds of pink artifacts. Default Microsoft graphics drivers seem to work better, although digital channels still show a completely pink frame every few minutes. So, if you're counting on graphics acceleration, go with nVidia instead.
I have basic cable with a few digital channels, and the Windows 7 beta Media Center software did get them properly.

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