ATSC PCI cards
As of right now there are 12 confirmed working devices.
- The pcHDTV HD-3000 card
- The air2pc (1st gen)
- The air2pc (2nd gen)
- The air2pc hd5000 (3rd gen)
- The DViCO FusionHDTV 3 GOLD-Q
- The DViCO FusionHDTV 3 GOLD-T
- The DViCO FusionHDTV 5 GOLD
- The DViCO FusionHDTV 5 LITE
- The DViCO FusionHDTV 5 USB GOLD
- The ATi HDTV Wonder
- The AVerMedia AVerTVHD A180
- The Kworld ATSC110
Here is a feature matrix to help keep track of what card does what:
pcHDTV HD-30007 | Air2PC 1st | Air2PC 2nd | Air2PC HD5000 3rd | Fusion HDTV3 Gold-Q | Fusion HDTV3 Gold-T | Fusion HDTV5 Lite | Fusion HDTV5 Gold | Fusion HDTV5 USB Gold | HDTV Wonder | AVerTV HD A180 | Kworld ATSC 110 | |
Frontend | or51132 | bcm3510 | nxt2002 | lgdt3303 | lgdt3302 | lgdt3302 | lgdt3303 | lgdt3303 | lgdt3303 | nxt2004 | nxt2004 | nxt2004 |
Bridge Interface | cx23882 | flexcop | flexcop | flexcop | cx23882 | cx23882 | bt878 | cx23882 | Cypress FX2LP | cx23882 | saa7135 | saa7135 |
VSB | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
QAM | yes | no | no5 | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no6 | yes | ? |
NTSC | yes | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | no4 | yes | no | yes |
Comp/S-video | yes | no | no | no | yes | yes | yes1 | yes | no4 | yes | yes | yes |
Analog CC | no2 | no | no | no | no2 | no2 | yes | no2 | ? | no2 | ? | ? |
PID filtering3 | sw | hw | hw | hw | sw | sw | sw | sw | sw | sw | sw | sw |
List Price8 | $1297 | N/A | $409 | $119 | N/A | N/A | $89 | $149 | $149 | $119 | $10910 | ~$70 |
Note 1: Has a working comp/s-video port hidden behind the card-plate.
Note 2: Hardware should allow it, but the cx88 driver has no support yet.
Note 3: 'hw' = hardware, 'sw' = software. Hardware PID filtering allows the card to discard unwanted packets. This typically amounts to saving <10% of the bitrate of a 8-VSB or QAM-64 broadcast, and >55% of the bitrate of a QAM-256 broadcast.
Note 4: Hardware should allow it, but the driver has no support yet.
Note 5: The demodulator supports QAM-64/256, but the tuner can't handle cable frequencies.
Note 6: Some may have had sucess. Recent attempts using currently shipping boards have failed
Note 7: The current model (and the only available model from pcHDTV, as of 2006-07-17) is the HD5500. Price shown includes shipping.
Note 8: Prices shown in $US, rounded to the nearest $1, as found on the web on 2006-07-17. I didn't bother with the discontinued ones (shown "N/A"), as prices will vary on eBay.
Note 9: As of 2006-08-24, the product listed on the Broadband Technologies website. Price shown is their eBay price.
Note 10: Model shown on web site "MTVHDA180" is the "AVerMedia AVerTVHD™ MCE A180 (white box)"; Price includes typical shipping.
Air2PC
The Air2PC cards usually consume less PCI and memory bandwidth than the other cards because they have a hardware PID filter. The hardware only handles a few streams, which may be limiting if collecting EIT data. The PID filtering is most useful when recording one program in a QAM-256 stream, or when recording low resolution streams. It doesn't save much bandwidth when recording an HDTV stream encoded with 8-VSB, since that set of streams consumes most of the bandwidth anyway.
DViCO
The ATSC frontend of the DViCO cards has been tested with 8-VSB (OTA) and QAM-256 (Cable) in the US. Source code is in video4linux + dvb-kernel CVS and kernel sources 2.6.13 and later for Gold, 2.6.15 and later for Lite.
External Links
- http://www.bbti.us/products_air2pc_atsc_pci.htm Broadband Technologies Company site, Air2PC cards.
- http://www.pchdtv.com pcHDTV Company Site, pcHDTV HD-5500 card.
- http://www.ati.com/products/hdtvwonder/index.html ATI Technology Company site, ATI HDTV Wonder card.
- http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/ENG/Products/ DViCO Company site, Fusion HDTV products.
- http://www.aver.com/2005home/wheretobuy/estore/estore_bestseller.shtml AVer TV Company site, AVerTV HD A180 card.
- http://www.kworldcomputer.com/product/digital/001/atsc_110.htm KWorld Company site, KWorld ATSC 110 card.