It's hard to say about the drivers, I think the reception improved with the newer driver but not significantly. The signal meter in VMC seems pretty useless to me, it keeps scanning over & over again & it seems to change with every scan from green to red or just sticks to red. I don't recall seeing yellow.

Incidentally about the ages of the tuners, they are both new (TV & tuner card) so I can't see where one would have a significant advantage over the other by age. The converter boxes are older so I expect them to be less capable, but in fact they out-perform the tuner card. I would like to know who makes the tuner on each device though because I'm sure that makes more of a difference than anything. I've seen references to LG tuners as being superior & the Zenith converter boxes I have are made by LG. Does anyone know who makes the tuner in Philips flat panels (if it isn't Philips)?

How far away are you from the broadcast towers?  Are there trees or hills nearby that are getting in the way?

Finding information about which tuner pulls the strongest signal is difficult.  When you consider all of the factors involved with testing, you'll realize that coming up with any kind of qualitative test is nearly impossible.  Factors such as multipath, weather, time of year (trees with leaves in the summer versus without in the winter, for instance), as well as the antenna used all have an impact.  There's also location impact such as close in the city for multipath and fringe area testing which means having an antenna set up at multiple locations.

It's nearly just as hard to find good information and testing of antennas and amps.  Some amps are really crummy and create more trouble than they solve.  Anyway, here are my few tips.

For your first tuner at least, get one that has been used by others and gets at least decent anecdotal reviews.  You almost certainly won't find the detailed information you're looking for, but certain manufacturers are better known for their reliability than others.  Asus is known for quality products, but Asus doesn't sell a lot of TV tuners and their tuners aren't as popular as others.

Your choice of antenna is a bit interesting.  While 120 inches is large, a huge chunk of that size is probably wasted on the VHF portion of the antenna.  Check www.antennaweb.org and see what channel frequency assignment (not channel number) your stations are using.  Chances are, they are all using the UHF band frequencies which means the VHF part of your antenna is useless for ATSC.  There is very little good testing of antennas out there, but I did find some good information on the Channel Master CM-4228 antenna which is a UHF-only antenna.

The best resource I have found on TV tuners is here: http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/

You need a in-line amplifier, I could not get any digital channels with my ATI 650 until I put one of these on:

http://www.channelmasterintl.com/terr/digital-amplifiers.html

 

SoylentGreen:

You need a in-line amplifier, I could not get any digital channels with my ATI 650 until I put one of these on:

http://www.channelmasterintl.com/terr/digital-amplifiers.html

 

He has two in-line amplifiers already. My next suggestion would be to try changing the powered splitter to an unpowered splitter. Maybe your signal strength is too high for the Asus tuner. It does happen.

How far away are you from the transmitter towers?

I had been concerned about too much amplification but again my original thought with this post was a relative comparison of how well different tuners perform on the same antenna hookup. I can rotate the antenna to the ideal position for each station, & tune them in, but it doesn't seem like I should have to when the other tuners will work just fine in a "compromise" position. For example if I want to watch channel A while recording channel B the rotation wouldn't be right, or if I programmed a recording but left the rotator in the wrong position. What I'd like is a tuner that tunes as well as the other tuners, which was why I was asking people to share their experiences re how well their pc tuners performed relative to their other devices. Unfortunately, as usually happens, the subject of subsequent posts changed topics to my antenna. Let me assure everyone I have a fantastic antenna, on an actual tower with 2 amplifiers, the antenna is not a problem. :-)

Yeah, I think you are missing the point.  Seems like everyone else has antenna's in less than ideal situations (mine is in my attic and I am 43 miles from the station).  Yours is an ideal situation.  What most people are trying to tell you is that your tuner is probably not the problem.  For that matter your antenna is probably not the problem.  Somewhere between your antenna and your tuner, or your drivers is probably where you should be looking.  There won't be THAT much variance in performance of tuners.  If you really think it is, go to Best Buy and try a different one, then take it back.  I am sure you will find your problem is not really the tuner unless it is somehow broken.  I don't see whats so difficult about performing this test, a Best Buy can't be that far.

My Philips TV gets several channels that my hauppauge 2250 does not pick up (they are not very important ones to me and are the weakest signals).  I am certain just like the OP that the tuner sensitivity is different.  There is absolutely no difference in anything else but the tuner card versus the tuner in the TV.  I also see differences between the zenith converter box and a no name one that I also have.  So tuners can certainly be different.  I have heard the Hauppauge 1250 is a very good tuner (based on threads at avsforum).  However, it was only a single tuner and I really needed a dual.  So I have settled with the 2250 which is good enough for my needs.  I agree with the recommendation to try another tuner card, be it one from best buy or amazon or whereever (just check the return policy). 

As stated a couple of posts above - a resource to compare tuner cards is here:

http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/comparetuners.html

In regards to your ASUS PE-9400 - do you have your antenna RG6 cable split to both inputs on the tuner card or only one?

I have a Happauge 2250 also. I have a massive tree problem. I finally moved my antenna about 150' away from my house, and trees, on a 30' mast. I have a Channel Master 4228, which is a high gain UHF antenna. Also have a Channel Master preamp, but it caused problems. Even with about 200' of RG6, I can get better reception with no amp. These tuners are very sensitive to overdrive. With 50' of RG6, you absolutely do not need an amp. Amps are only for overcoming signal loss on the coax, they will not help with reception on a good antenna. hdtvprimer.com will help with reception. Some parts are very technical, but it helped me a lot.

XXXBerto:

Yeah, I think you are missing the point.  Seems like everyone else has antenna's in less than ideal situations (mine is in my attic and I am 43 miles from the station).  Yours is an ideal situation.  What most people are trying to tell you is that your tuner is probably not the problem.  For that matter your antenna is probably not the problem.  Somewhere between your antenna and your tuner, or your drivers is probably where you should be looking.  There won't be THAT much variance in performance of tuners. 

Actually, Just about all the replies have completely missed my point. The point is to compare the tuning capability of different tuners, by the scientific method if you will, the independent variable being the tuner, the dependent being the reception, and the controlled variable being the antenna feed up to the tuner. Instead most replies have been about the antenna feed, there is nothing wrong with the antenna feed!!!! besides what I was looking for was a side by comparison of the tuning capability of different tuners using the same input in order to determine the relative quality of the tuner.

 

XXXBerto:

If you really think it is, go to Best Buy and try a different one, then take it back.  I am sure you will find your problem is not really the tuner unless it is somehow broken.  I don't see whats so difficult about performing this test, a Best Buy can't be that far

.

An hour... 1 way

andydrew:

As stated a couple of posts above - a resource to compare tuner cards is here:

http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/comparetuners.html

In regards to your ASUS PE-9400 - do you have your antenna RG6 cable split to both inputs on the tuner card or only one?

It was before the transition to digital, but it only has 1 digital tuner.

 I have a similar problem with an antenna that works for my TV but not for my PC-based tuners.

I own two USB stick  tuners, a Hauppauge HVR-950 and a similar Avermedia which is also a combo analog/digital tuner (don't have it handy for model #). The HVR-950 used to work ok for analog signals but in the rural area I live in we just switched over to digital a month or so ago. Now I can get about a dozen stations if I hook my cheap USB-powered Rosewill antenna up to my Samsung 40" TV. Taking the very same antenna feed and plugging it into either of my USB tuners wihtout changing anythning else gets me zero channels! The guide will populate a couple but if I try and tune to them I get a "No signal" error. I wouldn't have been too surprised to get slightly different results between the TV's tuner and the USB sticks, but I'm surprised that neither of the sticks can pull a single channel from the transmitter I can see from my living room (about 2 miles away on a mountain overlooking town).

I'm using 64 bit Win7 Enterprise if that makes any difference. Any ideas? Thanks!

 I gave up on the ASUS, I'd recommend avoiding ASUS too BTW, their support is awful (not just for this card), gigabyte seems to be pretty responsive.

I forked over the long dollar & bought the HD Homerun dual tuner, I had re-done my network just before and I had all kinds of problems getting it working. The Silicondust tech support is fantastic. They helped me figure out the trouble was in my network, not in the HD Homerun, I hadn't realized it but it had been messing up my network connection seemingly randomly for a while, I had just been blaming the slowdowns on cable traffic.

The HD Homerun is a much better tuner than the ASUS, but still slightly worse than my Philips TV & I also now have a cheap Element TV in one room that tunes slightly better.

The HD Homerun has handy tuning software that shows both signal strength & quality. It tunes faster than the ASUS & it usually will at least keep the audio stream even if the picture is badly pixelated. This is a great improvement over the converter box, that will drop the audio first making viewing impossible, when the audio stream is constant you can stand some picture problems, but when you lose the audio, or worse when it stutters, it becomes unwatchable.

The other feature of the HD Homerun is that every computer on the network (I have 5) can watch TV with it, no more than 2 at a time of course, but that sure beats buying 5 tuner cards & dealing with 5 times the problems.

foxprints:

Actually, Just about all the replies have completely missed my point. The point is to compare the tuning capability of different tuners, by the scientific method if you will, the independent variable being the tuner, the dependent being the reception, and the controlled variable being the antenna feed up to the tuner. Instead most replies have been about the antenna feed, there is nothing wrong with the antenna feed!!!! besides what I was looking for was a side by comparison of the tuning capability of different tuners using the same input in order to determine the relative quality of the tuner.

.

I have a channel that gives me some problems now and then because, when it is working, I guess i'm receiving just enough signal to see the channel and no more.  I have an ATI HDTV Wonder, ATI TV Wonder 650 PCI, FusionHDTV5 USB, and Pinnacle PCTV 800e, in the same system, hooked to the same antenna.  When I do get some reception problems, basically all these tuners (evaluating ATSC OTA only) give out/cut in at the same time, so I'm going to say they are equivalent.

Can anyone say that they were able to lock onto a channel with an Avermedia or Hauppauge or whatever tuner while they were not able to lock on with any of the above tuners?  or vice-versa?

My own experience is that HVR-2250 PCIe dual tuners are much better at reception than were A180 and FusionHDTV5 tuners in the same installation. My issue was largely multipath (which shows up as an intermittently strong or weak signal depending on weather conditions), the HVR-2250 seems to be much better at rejecting it.