[mythtvnz] Nova T-500 cards

[Brett Miller]

> On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:03:55 +1300, you wrote:
>
>>What I always understood the nova-t-500 to be:
>>
>>The original Nova-T-500 is a USB device.
>>Two USB tuners & USB hub on  PCI card.
>>
>>Simple cheap clever way to get dual tuners on one PCB.
>>
>>I read something on the web about a reason for going to two antenna 
>>inputs.
>>Don't remember the details, but seems pointless & annoying as will have 
>>more
>>loss with one antenna thru' splitter.
>>Only benefit would be pointing the two UHF antenna in different 
>>directions.
>
> It is actually better to have two aerial inputs.  If there is only one
> input, then there has to be a splitter on the board, and they are
> frequently of dubious quality.  With separate inputs, you can feed
> them both whatever quality signal you want, without having another 6?
> dB of loss in the onboard splitter.  In NZ, you need three DVB-T
> tuners to be able to record all channels at the same time.  So you
> probably will have a three-way splitter with the third aerial feed
> going to another card.  With an onboard splitter, that third aerial
> would have a higher signal level as it is not further split and the
> signal to the two Nova-T tuners would be lower level.
>

The on-board splitter will not cause any excess loss.
One single input correctly terminated, one LNA with gain to offset any 
splitting loss feeding two tuners.
I would be more worried about the nasty cheap consumer market splitters.

With two inputs people are going to join them together with a bit of wire, I 
would.

You are right about needing the extra tuner to get three & another antenna 
does give you more signal.

Better to have just one high gain antenna as big as necessary, TV aerials 
are a blot on the landscape & 91 element UHF ones are length > 2m.