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VBox Cat's Eye 164e was reviewed by hdtvtunerinfo.com
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Well, after a 7 month wait (from the original release announcement), the DTA-164e is finally here. It was to be the first ATSC/digital PCI-e x1 tuner on market, however due to the delay, the Fusion HDTV5 Express beat it by a few weeks. But it is the first dual ATSC tuner on the market. The DTA-164e is actually a dual hybrid tuner (analog/digital) with software encoding for analog. There is no QAM (digital cable) capability.
Here's what you get in the box:
Cat's Eye 164e HDTV Tuner Card w/PCI Bracket
Low profile PCI Bracket
Installation CD includes drivers, MPEG Encoding software (demo version) and Installation Guide
Quick Installation Guide
The install is straight forward. Install the card, boot, install the drivers from the CD as directed by the XP installation wizard. Would suggest downloading and installing the latest drivers from Vbox here.
DTA-164e Highlights
Works as any combination (2 analog, 2 digital, 1 analog/1 digital) in Media Center. See Media Center 2005 (below) or Vista RTM page (soon) for install details.
Works with SageTV and BeyondTV.
Is not as good at tuning weak/multipath signals as the Vbox DTA-150 and some 5th generation tuners, but better than the new ATI Wonder 650 and many others.
Analog video quality is very good, not great, but better than some other software encoder tuners.
Digital/ATSC tuning is inconsistent. Drivers to fix this should be out soon.
Card runs a bit hot. Cooling a consideration for small case PCs or ones with poor air flow.
PC processor utilization acceptable, within published system requirements.
Works well with other analog and digital tuners both PCI and USB based.
The upper RF supplies signal for the 2 digital tuners, the bottom RF for the 2 analog tuners. Therefore only one RF connection is required if digital is all that you need.
Attach a over the air antenna to the top RF port and a analog cable to the bottom for simultaneous recording of an over the air digital, and a analog cable program using MCE.
Attach two over the air antenna RF inputs and use the tuner to view/record any combination of 2 analog, or 2 digital, or 1 analog and 1 digital program at the same time, and change the combination at any time using MCE.
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