9. Tuners

One of the lessons that I learned with the MEGA 180 HTPC was that the software-based All in Wonder TV tuner was offloading part of the work of recording TV to the CPU and slowing the system down. Since the MEGA 180 was prone to overheating I had to be careful not to multitask very much when I was recording TV. By the time I got around to planning this build I knew that I would never use a software tuner again.

The motherboard I selected had three PCI slots. Since I wanted two standard definition TV tuners, an HDTV tuner and a sound card, I decided to go with Hauppauge's WinTV PVR 500 MCE dual tuner. Both tuners mounted on the PVR 500 are hardware-based and do not put a heavy load on the CPU. The card splits the incoming TV signal and is capable of recording two shows simultaneously (the second coax connector on the card is used to attach an antenna to the built in radio tuner). Two standard definition tuners is a luxury that I would definitely recommend for any HTPC builder. It's nice to be able to watch one TV program while recording another or being able to record two programs at once.

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR 500 MCE dual tuner card