HTPC What is the Diff between digital and analogue?

What is the difference between a digital tuner, and an analog one? I've got a largescreen HD tv. I'm trying to use a computer as a PVR device, and want the best picture quality of my shows that I can get. What's the best option for me?

 

Digital will generally give you the best picture quality but it depends on how much bandwidth is allocated to the channel. I have used both analogue and dvb-t cards (The USA use ATSC standard instead of dvb-t) and with a good signal analogue will look just as good as dvb-t signal. As you in the USA what is your signal source? cable, sat or over the air?

 

In my personal experience, at least on normal TVs, analog(ue) signal looks better. The digital seems to always go all artifactey and blockey and all those annoything things you'd get with a low-bitrate transcode. It may also look better on a comp tuner, as they can do all those postprocessing effects that your cheap cable/decoder box probably won't be doing.

However as you've got a HDTV, the digital may well look better. But obviously, HD signal would look best (though you can't pipe anything but over-the-air HD through your comp, last I knew).

If you plan to record shows using the comp (rather than just run them through), you're best off with digital, as it's already encoded signal. It'll be big files, but there's no encoding involved recording digital so you can transcode it to soemthing smaller at a later date (with an analog input, you have to encode it as it's being recorded, and then if you want you can transcode it to a smaller file). Well, it depends on the CPU really, and whether it's a dedicated box. But recording analog is going to take a lot more processor time than recording digital.

 

Thats true if you use a software analogue encoder card, but not true if you use a analogue hardware encoder card such as the hauppauge pvr150.

 

I'm thinking of getting the PVR 500 by Hauppage, for it's dual tuner capability, but I've heard rumors that the dual tuner makes the signal have less clarity. Any truth to this?

 

If you use a splitter then you do lose some signal strength, but you can use a booster to compensate that. But if you have a good signal to start off with then you will not notice any difference with a passive splitter. The pvr 500 would be a good choice for analogue due to its wide support by third party applications.

 

I would suggest best of both worlds. I have a digital and analog in my main PVR hooked to an old Hitachi rear projection. Digital will usually have a nice crisp image but can pixilate that becomes very annoying IMO but then again I recieve some channels on my digital that I cant on the analog.

For reference mine is hooked up as followed:
Analog - Time warner cable television Basic pack (All news, Weather, TBS)
Digital - Digital antenna on the roof
Satellite tuner - Being ordered but will connect too a dish

In the end I would recommend a little of each if you can afford it.

 

so whats my card, ive got a pinnacle media center 300i, as in terms of hardware encoder card or software?

 

It's a dvb-t card which is digital thus has a software encoder; as dvb-t is already in a mpeg format by the broadcaster it would be a complete waste of time having a hardware encoder for the digital side. You really only have to worry is your card has an hardware/software encoder on analogue sources.