Questions about Hauppauge WINTV-PVR 500 Dual tuner card.HELP

[Viicloud10]

Ok i own a media center edition computer with no tv tuner. I am looking into buyign a tv tuner. Preferrably one that can tune in 2 channels. Thats when i came across this one. So here are my questions. Please help me on these.
And to let you know incase these play a role into any of the answers i have:

Dual PCIe 16x Geforce 7800 GTX 256mb
Pentium D 3.2 gHz
2gb DDR2 ram
and only 1 PCI slot available.

Questions:
1. Do i need only PCI slot to take full advantage of all the features on this card?
2. I have cable television. Will this card allow me to plug 2 cables into it to watch 2 channels? (basic stupid questions but just to make sure.)
3. I see this card has one RCA (red white and yellow plugs) That allows input from DVDs and such input correct?
4. Can i buy a separate remote for MCE to work with this tuner?
5. And i have come across one bad review of this item in conjunction with a Dual core computer (which i have) is this true?

thanks in advance

 

[lakedude]

I don't have one of these boards but I have had several AIW boards so I kinda know what is going on with the Hauppauge.

1) Yes you only need one regular PCI slot for the board.

2) From Hauppauge's web site: "Includes a built-in TV splitter, so you only need to make one connection to your television cable."

3) Yes, you can hook up an external video source using S-video or composite (yellow).

4) I have no idea. My AIW cards all included a remote which was useless because I need to change channels at the sat box.

5) No idea.

 

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[ivoryjohn]

I don't have the dual tuner 500, but I have the single tuner version the pvr150. I will try and describe those points of my setup that might help you.

I have sattellite and connect the decoder box to the tuner via svhs cable. The Ir blaster software changes the channels on the decoder box and the remote works great.

If I had dual tuners and cable, I would set one tuner on the cable box for channels that must be descrambled (using svhs input), and I would splitter the cable to the other tuner to capture unscrambled channels.

I have a dual core opteron 165, and it works GREAT!!!! I have heard rumors of people with problems, but I don't have them. I am running on W2000 atm. I expect if there are problems with dual cores, it is specific to windows MCE, or possibly a VIA chipset.

I am still auditioning the various software packages, but so far BeyondTV is giving me the least headaches, and it takes advantage of the dual cores very nicely.