Colossus Questions

[dkrom]

I'm thinking about buying a colossus pci card from eBay and have some questions I'm hoping someone can answer.

1. Should I get a Colossus or Colossus 2? I know the 2 does 1080p which should be better, but I'd like some feedback from a person who actually has used the card(s).

2. Is it true that if you have a Colossus card installed, then you can't use any other tuner cards? I would like to a still be able to use my other card for OTA.

Any help is appreciated.

[jachin99]

I don't think you can easily switch between a video capture card and regular TV tuners. I think when you switch you have to rerun live TV setup

[jachin99]

I thought about this a little more. If the colossus comes with some kind of viewer program then you could possibly add that to your start menu, and setup live TV in WMC via tv setup. This would give you an option on the start menu to view your video capture content, and Live TV. What are you trying to view through the colossus?

[stuartm]

I don't think you can easily switch between a video capture card and regular TV tuners. I think when you switch you have to rerun live TV setup

If you are using video capture from a tuning device (e.g. a set top box) WMC supports that kind of setup and allows additional tuners. Before I switched to Cablecard tuners I used a Hauppauge HD-PVR box to capture from my DirecTV tuner and also had an OTA tuner card and it all worked fine in WMC. This was exploiting the Analog Hole and I could record HD from the Satellite tuner Analog output.

[jachin99]

I don't think you can easily switch between a video capture card and regular TV tuners. I think when you switch you have to rerun live TV setup

If you are using video capture from a tuning device (e.g. a set top box) WMC supports that kind of setup and allows additional tuners. Before I switched to Cablecard tuners I used a Hauppauge HD-PVR box to capture from my DirecTV tuner and also had an OTA tuner card and it all worked fine in WMC. This was exploiting the Analog Hole and I could record HD from the Satellite tuner Analog output.

That's good news. What channel did you need to tune to in order to view the captured video? I have a spare analogue capture card and I would love to try this.

[stuartm]

It's been a long time since I had this setup but as best as I can remember, The capture card is connected to the RGB outputs of the tuning device (direcTV or set top box) then the box gets tuned via an IR transmitter. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly how the IR emitter is trained but if you tell WMC you have a set top box then as best as I remember it will go down a path where you can train WMC what IR codes are needed to tune your cable/satellite box. I also remember I was using an additional bit of software from DVBLink I think. Sorry if this is a little non-specific but I'm afraid it's just been way too long since I had this setup. You might be able to find some how-to info by searching around on the net. Hauppauge also has setup info for their capture cards here:
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/ ... html?tab=6

[gobo]

Hi

I use a combination of cablecard and a Colossus. I don't think that Hauppauge ever release drivers for the Colossus 2 and WMC or even the Colossus 1 past Windows 7. Not sure. As far as tuning, I just tune it like any other channel in the guide and it will switch from a cablecard channel to a Colossus channel seamlessly. At first the guide showed 2 channels for each channel #. I believe I had to use Guidetool to hide channels for each tuners channels for the ones I didn't want doubles for. I use the Colossus to record anything that I don't want with DRM. It's been a long while since I set it all up and since it just works and since I haven't had to tinker with it at all I am kind of foggy about the details I went through. I do know I didn't use DVBlink at all. I still had the original instructions and I attached the software needed and the original Hauppauge PDF Instructions to this message.

[dkrom]

Thanks everyone. Now that I know it's possible to have both I'll be picking one up. Too bad the ones I saw on ebay sold already. Thanks gobo for the software and the heads up that I shouldn't get the 2 since the software probably doesn't work with WMC.

[bigjohn]

I'm running 4 colossus cards using DVB-Link... Hauppauge as far as I know only allowed one with their driver at a time... so that was a non starter. I'm on OLD dvb-link too... so, man, I back up religiously!