LifeView FlyTV Express X1 MST T2A2M (Dual Hybrid with hardware encoding)

With the introduction of Hybrid (DVB-T or Analogue) cards you have always had the ability to have a future proofed solution for when or if your country is moving to DVB Terrestrial broadcasting. The biggest problem with most 'hybrid' cards is that they are software encoding for the analogue TV reception. Why do I say this is a problem you may ask. Well with HTPC solutions in reality you don't want the CPU stressed where possible and having to use software encoders to record or timeshift TV unfortunately does just that.

I can understand why card manufacturers don't put much effort into hardware encoding support for hybrid cards because the user will be moving from analogue to DVB-T, right... hrmm well no. A lot of us like to record from Set Top Boxes or other external analogue outputing devices whilst using DVB-T. Since hybrid cards only have one tuner and some applications like MediaPortal use the tuner when inactive to grab EPG data etc this makes it near impossible to use.

Our kind friends at Animation Technologies have provided us with a couple of their LifeView FlyTV Express X1 MST T2A2M cards to be reviewed and add functionality support to our software.

So whats so good about these cards? Well for a start they have dual tuners thus eleminating the tuner lock mentioned earlier. Like normal hybrids thse cards from Animation can either be DVB-T or Analogue tuners so you can easily have one tuner for digital TV and the other for standard terrestrial analogue. Then again depending on your specific configuration they can be both DVB-T or both Analogue - you have the flexibility. Like all good hybrid cards (as stated by me) it has a built in hardware encoder from ViXS which can encode from both tuners in parrallel.

Card contents

1. PCI Express card
2. RF to F-Type connectors
3. Radio antennae
4. S-Video and RCA connecotrs

Animation provides two RF to F-Type connectors to allow analogu cable users to use the tuners with ease if required. (Note: This is not DVB-C)

For some reason both packages included a radio antennae however there was no connector on the card for it to plug in directly without use of an adapter (which was not supplied). See below RF connectors below. I spoke to Animation about this and the reatail package will ship with an adapter for FM radio.

Like most other LifeView branded cards there is an adapter for connectiong external devices using RCA and S-Video. As you can tell by the photo above there are two sets and to make it slightly easier they're colour coded. Note: Only one set has a S-Video connector - Tuner 1. For composite video-in you'll need to use Tuner 2.

Note: For the sharp eyed viewer of this review you'll also notice a phono connector in the picture above just below the white RCA connector. This is for a remote control. Unfortunately we did not have this in our review package however Animation has also stated this will be in the retail packaging.

Right lets put this card through some MediaPortal tests :)

MediaPortal

You'll need SVN from the 4th of November for this particular card to work in MediaPortal. From configuration you'll have the option to choose from four cards. Obviously you can only choose two of the preferred tuners you wish to use just make sure both are not the same tuner :-).

TVServer

As expected TVServer detects the cards full capabilities and will list the four tuners assigned to the server. Like MediaPortal you'll have to disable (uncheck) the two tuners which you do not wish to use to avoid any tuner lock situations.

At the time of writing the analogue tuner functionality has issues which will hopefully be resolved soon. I will update this section if required.

Both analog and digital tuners are now supported by the TvServer

Pros

• Dual tuners with selectable configurations.
• Quality encoder which encodes in parallel without issues.
• Dual DVB-T HDTV capable for recording 2x H.264 streams.
• Works with MediaPortal :-) 

Cons

• tuner sensitivity
• no CI interface

Unfortunately the sensitively of the tuners are not that great so for users in a poor reception area for DVB terrestrial will come away dissapointed. Ensure you have an external roof mounted aerial before you buy one of these bad boys.

Another miss is that there is no CI interface. This means that the card is only usable in countries where DVB-T is not encrypted

MediaPortal points

Apart from the points mentioned above the encoder quality settings cannot be adjusted as yet however in the future this will be possible.
The remote control is unlikely to work with MediaPortal natively due to not being able to test the functionality and capabilities. If I get a remote for testing I will update this review with further details.

Overal Rating

I give this card four stars out of five. Apart from the slight tuner issues I'm a fussy chap and I prefer cards with RCA & S-Video connectors on the card/bracket rather than a break-out cable which adds more mess behind ones rig. Having a front mountable audio / video connector option for external devices could then be used like some of the other LifeView cards available.

Further information can be found here... http://www.lifeview.com.tw/image/PDF_Data_sheet/PCIeExpressX1.pdf

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