tv tuner

[J.Clarke]

On 22 Aug 2003 09:19:41 -0700

I bought a ATI Redeon 9500 Pro and am pretty much pleased by its
performance. Can this card be used as a tv tuner? I'm interested in
watching tv on my pc but not sure how to go about it. Would I have to
buy another card for this purpose? Any input would be greatly
apreciated. Thanks in advacne.

The only ATI boards with tuners are labelled "All-In-Wonder".

Personally I find that a hacked Series 1 Tivo in conjunction with a PC
is a more satisfactory solution than any PC-based system. None
of the PC-based products have schedulers with even a fraction of
the capability of the Tivo scheduler.

That said, however, if you really want a PC-based solution, there
are several tuner boards that work well with ATI video boards--ATI sells
a few, and the dvico FusionHDTV II board with the most recent software
tunes both SD and HD TV and makes good use of ATI video boards if
present. If you are looking primarily for time shifting and pause and
not an editing rig, the Hauppauge PVR-250 and 350 boards, which have
hardware compression but don't provide access to the uncompressed video
stream are good choices as they offload the compression task and leave
plenty of CPU power for other purposes.

If your ATI board has VIVO (Video-In-Video-Out) then you can just run a
composite or S-Video cable from your VCR or cable box or whatever to the
video in port and capture that way.

 

[cervantes]

I bought a ATI Redeon 9500 Pro and am pretty much pleased by its
performance. Can this card be used as a tv tuner? I'm interested in
watching tv on my pc but not sure how to go about it. Would I have to
buy another card for this purpose? Any input would be greatly
apreciated. Thanks in advacne.

 

[Vance McNeil]

Frankly, as an owner of an AIW 8500DV, I would recommend getting a separate
tuner card rather than a combo card. I find the tuner I have to be a little
fuzzy. If I input from my VCR and use it's tuner, it's crisper and the
channels change faster.

 

[Gnasher]

I find the tuner I have to be a little
fuzzy. If I input from my VCR and use it's tuner, it's crisper and the
channels change faster.

That is probably due to RF interference inside the case. An external
tuner will usually always be superior because it is isolated from RF
interference. There are a few external TV tuners made for the PC too.
Viewsoinc makes one that is supposed to be really nice that upscales
the res to 1280x1024, but it's also quite expensive. The others are
just tuners that connect to your PC via USB.

 

[Not so quick]

Personally I find that a hacked Series 1 Tivo in conjunction with a PC
is a more satisfactory solution than any PC-based system. None
of the PC-based products have schedulers with even a fraction of
the capability of the Tivo scheduler.

Where can I find out more about Tivo. It sounds great and I've heard
several people mention it. What does the hack do? and why is a series
1 better than what I assume is the series 2 or 3. Thanks : -)

 

[Lenroc]

Where can I find out more about Tivo. It sounds great and I've heard
several people mention it. What does the hack do? and why is a series
1 better than what I assume is the series 2 or 3. Thanks : -)

Not to be rude, but first:


Then, http://www.tivo.com/1.0.asp (What is Tivo).

Finally, a series 1 is "better" because a series 2 is less customizable,
and IIRC, Tivo has more control over your box... Something along those
lines...

 

[Mojo]

Never read that before. But now that I have ... I find it offensive that the
author paints us as a bunch of geeks. He says:

"Some people assert that many hackers ... are actually missing some of the
brain circuitry that lubricates `normal' human social interaction. This may
or may not be true. If you are not a hacker yourself, it may help you cope
with our eccentricities if you think of us as being brain-damaged. Go right
ahead. We won't care; we like being whatever it is we are ..."

In other words, we're geeks, and we like it. (Count me out.)

 

[Not so quick]

General Tivo information you can find at <http://www.tivo.com>. You can
also find some at <http://www.directv.com>--there are Tivos made
specifically to work with that service. Tivo hacking information you
can find at <http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/> and
<http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/>. The hacks do various
things--there's one that provides a Web interface, another that provides
on-screen caller ID, another that allows extraction of the video files,
etc. Pretty much anything you might want a Tivo to do somebody has
probably come up with a hack for.

The Series 1 is the original model, and the most hackable--while Tivo
has generally been very friendly to the hacking community there are some
hacks that give their lawyers heartburn--in the Series 2 they tried to
lock the system down to the extent that those particular hacks don't
work--eventually the hackers will find the workarounds but for now the
Series 2 is less hackable than the Series 1.

The strength of this approach is that you get the versatility of the
Tivo scheduler but can still burn the recordings to DVD or whatever
other media you want. If you run a DirecTivo (the type that is designed
for DirecTV) you gain the additional benefit that the recorded stream is
digital from the satellite--not digital converted to analog and then
redigitized with two generations of loss.

--

Thanks, that was one of the most informative posts I've ever gotten
an any subject, honestly. I fell like I'm taking advantage of your
help because the other poster was right in suggesting that I do some
homework myself, but I have one more question... actually I just
figured it out. Thanks again for helping. My SVHS recorder just got
trashed by the repairman and I wouldn't have ever thought about
a Tivo unless the people in these ngs had brought it to my attention.
: -)