2. Meet Our Combo Card Lineup

The basic formulation for a so-called combo card combines both an NTSC and ATSC tuner. This form of construction also comes with an interesting technology limitation. Because there is exactly one tuner of each kind on a card, you can only deal with two video streams at any given moment (one for each tuner). Thus, you can either choose to watch an NTSC video stream, and simultaneously record either an OTA or cable-based ATSC video stream, or vice versa. In practical terms, this means it’s a good idea to double up on such cards if you want to be able to record and play back any kind of video stream at the same time (only by installing two such cards in a PC could you simultaneously record and view the same kinds of video streams at any given moment, or mix and match digital video streams as you might like to). Another potential use includes recording two programs simultaneously (one NTSC, the other ATSC) with playback of a third program, but only from a previous recording.

All three cards feature dual-capability ATSC/clear QAM tuners so that you can use them to tune in OTA HDTV, or view unscrambled HDTV signals from your cable TV provider. All three also include a built-in hardware MPEG-2 hardware encoder so that they can record TV programs directly to a hard disk. Together with built-in 3-D comb filters, this architecture also reduces consumption of CPU resources and helps to improve the quality of the video content they process and capture.

The three cards in our lineup are as follows:

Hauppauge HVR-1800: a full-height (3.8" x 5.6" / 96.5mm x 142.2mm) PCI-e x1 card with FM antenna at top, CATV input in the middle and OTA ATSC antenna input at the bottom. Not only does this card feature new-design compact ATSC/QAM and NTSC tuner capsules, it’s the only one of these three cards to include an FM tuner as well.

The HVR-1800 packs a lot of circuitry into a small amount of real estate, including an FM tuner, plus the usual video and audio inputs.

Saber VistaView DA-1N1-E: a full-height (3.8" x 5.75" / 96.5mm x 146mm) PCI-e x1 card with CATV input on top, OTA ATSC antenna input below, S-Video input and stereo audio inputs below. It features an older-style metal-capsule NTSC tuner above a newer (but still metal-clad) ATSC tuner capsule below, just to the right of the video inputs.

The VistaView DA-1N1-E card includes space to accommodate the older, metal-sheathed NTSC tuner capsule.

AVerMedia AVerTV M780 Combo PCI Express: a half-height (2.25" x 6" / 57.2mm x 152.4mm) PCI-e x1 card with CATV input on top, OTA ATSC antenna input below, S-Video input and mini-headphone jack for audio at the bottom. It features the most compact of all the tuner capsules for the three cards we cover here (as discussed later in this story in our temperature measurements section).

The M780 occupies around 64% of the surface area for either the HVR-1800 or the DA-1N1-E cards.

In terms of physical footprint, the AVerMedia M780 is the smallest of the bunch. The HVR-1800 and the DA-1N1-E are nearly equal in size, but the M780 occupies less than 65% of the surface area for either card. It also has the smallest tuner capsules as well.