Has anyone out there compared TVE vs. Prime for the same channel(s)? I'm asking because I cannot get a few channels via TVE through my cable provider Comcast/Xfinity. So I'm thinking about going the HDHR Prime+CableCard route.
But, if I were to do that, should I ditch the TVE source in ChannelsDVR and just use the Prime? Or does the TVE source have any advantages over Prime such that I should keep both sources, and prioritize TVE ahead of the Prime?
See:
I have XFINITY and have a Prime and also TVE ... no reason why not to use TVE it's free. And if you run out of Prime tuners and a channel is available on TVE it will record on TVE.
I guess the nature of my question was more along the lines of...
If I can get the same channel via TVE and HDHR Prime, which one would be your first choice? I see the TVE uses H.264 whereas Prime is, what, MPEG4? So probably less disk space. What about PQ?
TVE PQ is fine sound is only Stereo.
The video stream available via the Prime can vary based upon your cable company. Where I am, Spectrum's streams are all MPEG2, which are much larger than the H.264/AVC streams (sometimes thought of as MP4). I know many channels on Comcast are AVC, so it varies by region.
It just depends on what your goal is. I have my Prime as my higher priority tuner because I prefer higher quality video and audio. TVE for me is a fallback tuner for duplicate channels, and a source of some additional channels that I don't get on my Prime.
For United States users who live in Mountain or Pacific time zones, TVE allows you to access East Coast feeds of many cable channels that air programs 3 hours earlier than the West Coast feeds that are available on Prime.
Picture quality depends on the channel. ESPN, Fox News, and FX all have picture quality that is about equivalent to the picture quality on Prime (720p 60fps at a pretty decent bitrate). In addition, TVE gets you better-than-SD resolution of channels like C-SPAN, which are typically only available in standard definition on Prime.
But for most other channels, TVE gets you a feed with a reduced frame rate, which often causes a visible stuttering effect during motion (particularly camera pans) if you are viewing content produced at 24fps (basically, almost every non-live-action TV show). Some people will be really annoyed by this, while others probably won't even notice. If you have motion smoothing enabled on your TV (I don't use it but I imagine a lot of people do), then the judder could become much less noticeable.
As mentioned by others, the only way to get Dolby Digital 5.1 is with Prime. In theory TVE channels could provide a stereo downmix that could be decoded back to surround using Dolby ProLogic or DTS Neo 6. I'm not sure how common this is in practice, though. I have Dolby ProLogic decoding enabled on my receiver for stereo sources and have not heard any TVE channels that seem to clearly be taking advantage of it.
Personally... I use both TVE and Prime. I prioritize Prime over TVE in my sources. I live in California so most of my Prime channels are delayed west coast feeds -- which means that even though the Prime is higher priority than TVE, some shows will automatically get recorded on TVE because it airs earlier. This isn't always desirable because some channels have much better picture quality on Prime than TVE. So for some of my DVR passes, I set them up to only record from the Prime channels if I'm concerned about picture quality (for example, I prefer to record BBC America shows on Prime, despite the 3 hour delay, because the picture quality is significantly better).
For whatever channels are copy-freely on the Prime, I would always take the Prime over TVE. I didn't purchase a multichannel audio system to play stereo. On the other hand, if you just like to watch the news, TVE would be okay in a pinch.
Depending on your viewing device, the TVE picture quality is not going to be equivalent to the data stream coming from your cable provider.
I have discovered that some times OTA and a TVE version of that same station is either better or worse.
I have a couple of OTA stations that are in 1080, where as the TVE stream is only 720.
I have a couple of 480i OTA channles, and the TVE stream is 720p HD (and it real hd, u can tell).