0Blackgold 3600: The new ultimate TV Card

I’ve recently moved house, but now that I’ve restored inter­net access (always the first pri­or­ity) I’ve been tasked with fully sort­ing out TV in the house.  The pre­vi­ous setup isn’t bad — with a Media Serv­er (includ­ing TV cards) tucked away, and a HTPC in the lounge.  These both run Media Cen­ter and DVBLink.  This way I can also get TV on my desktop PC and laptop.  In the near future I’ll be build­ing anoth­er HTPC for the bed­room TV so we can watch recor­ded pro­grammes in bed.  All these poten­tial record­ings and watch­ing are bey­ond the cap­ab­il­ity of my cur­rent tuner setup — a Black­Gold BGT3620 and a Compro S350. 

The Black­gold does a great job at get­ting freeview HD and its a dual tuner.  The Compro is a single tuner and only sup­ports DVB-S, which means many freesat chan­nels are now unavail­able.  I’ve been really impressed with the Black­gold, and I like hav­ing a mix of freeview and freesat so that a prob­lem with one does­n’t mean no TV, so I decided to look for a DVB-S2 and DVB-T2 card.  The obvi­ous option was the black­gold BGT3600 which has a dual tuner for both (along with a cable tuner).  I’ve pre-ordered one which should turn up towards the end of Feb­ru­ary with luck.  This will provide me with a total of 7 usable tuners which should be more than enough for the fore­see­able future.  When I’ve had the card in use for a week or 2 I’ll write up some thoughts about it and drop a link in here.