TV Tuner Card

[SBreez]

Looking to get a TV Tuner card for my computer and have a couple questions.
How well would a tuner card work with satellite TV? Since the signal has
passed through the sat box it is pretty much already "tuned" so I'm a bit
confused on this. Also , would the recording feature work with satellite?

Basically all I'm looking for is having a "CNN Window" while I'm on the
computer and maybe recording a few snatches of TV once in a while.

Dell Dim 4400
Win XP Home
ATI Radeon Pro 9000

 

[John]

Looking to get a TV Tuner card for my computer and have a couple questions.
How well would a tuner card work with satellite TV? Since the signal has
passed through the sat box it is pretty much already "tuned" so I'm a bit
confused on this. Also , would the recording feature work with satellite?

Ive never used SAT TV but I dont see why it shouldnt. As long as the
feed to the TV is a regular feed which it should be or a regular TV
wouldnt be able to get channels.

The only problems is like with my digital box.
Digital cable stations usually give you an analog feed of say 80
channels or so . Those are the ones I can get with my TV tuner and
change channels with my PC channel changer.

But my DIgital box gets hundreds of channels and even music and the
radio. To get those channels - I have to rely on my digital box TV
remote to change the channels for my TV and that feed comes outs of
the S-video out of my digital and into the S-video in on my tuner
card.

You have this -

CABLE feed ------------------carries both analog and digital

Analog -----------------> can go into TV or Tuner card
can change channels without a digital box on TV
and you can plug the coax into TV card and change
channels with your PC. Kind of like all 80s analog channels
are there.

DIGITAL ----------------> Digital box have to change channels
with digital box remote control. Whatever is fed to the TV
the channel on your digital box is what is fed to your Tuner
card on the one S-video in channel. So you have like 80
or whatever analog + one S-video in - channel and you can
change your PC tuner to any of the 80 analog channels and
one channel for the S-video. You can change TO the svideo
channel on your PC but not whats on it - that feed is determined by
what channel your box is set to.

You tuner card has this :

----------> coax in to get the usual analog 70-80 channels

----------> RCA sound in Need both for Digital channels
----------> Svideo In

Doesnt SAT work by getting the local channels with an antenna
or basic cable analog feed? Then thats what you could change
in your PC and all the SAT channels I guess would be like the digital
box - you would keep it on Svideo all the time and change channels
with your SAT box remote. I know LAME but thats the way it is. If you
keep it on CNN anyway - you wont be changing channels all the time.

Ive seen some expensive digital TV cards but not sure how that works.

The s-video in is better quality anyway.
Not all cards have S-video in though most do. Some have that other
type - I forget the name of it at the moment. Early onset alzheimers.
Not all have stereo sound too. Not all work with Radeons - like
possibly the Avermedia card though that might have changed.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Looking to get a TV Tuner card for my computer and have a couple questions.
How well would a tuner card work with satellite TV? Since the signal has
passed through the sat box it is pretty much already "tuned" so I'm a bit
confused on this. Also , would the recording feature work with satellite?

Basically all I'm looking for is having a "CNN Window" while I'm on the
computer and maybe recording a few snatches of TV once in a while.

Dell Dim 4400
Win XP Home
ATI Radeon Pro 9000

There are two parts to a TV card. It has a TV tuner and it is a capture
card as well. You could jus get a capture card like a Navis-Pro, but they
are a quite expensive. Then there are professional capture cards that cost
thousands.

Or you could use the cheap capture from the video-in on a TV card.
Hauppauge cards have a s-video input.

You could also get a Digital TV card like the Hauppage Nexus-s or Nova-s
(european names) and get the additional Common Interface (for the sat-card)
and completely do away with your sat box altogether.

ss.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

There are two parts to a TV card. It has a TV tuner and it is a capture
card as well. You could jus get a capture card like a Navis-Pro, but they
are a quite expensive. Then there are professional capture cards that cost
thousands.

Or you could use the cheap capture from the video-in on a TV card.
Hauppauge cards have a s-video input.

You could also get a Digital TV card like the Hauppage Nexus-s or Nova-s
(european names) and get the additional Common Interface (for the sat-card)
and completely do away with your sat box altogether.

You could also consider one of the Hauppauge PVR cards that have hardware
MPEG encoding, like a Navis-Pro.

ss.

 

[Mike Mastro]

Someone else can kick in here if I'm wrong, but I don't think a regular TV
tuner card would work for satellite. The transmission is different than
regular cable. Hence, the CATV tuner in the card wouldn't know what to do
with the data coming from the satellite feed. You could probably route
the signal to your computer via the S-video or RCA jacks after it passes
thru the satellite tuner, but that would assume that you then have some sort
of video input to the computer (like the input you can do with an
all-in-wonder card or other tuner cards). However, in this setup, you
wouldn't be using the tuner part of the card, just the video capture
portion.

Hope this makes sense....and good luck.

Mike

 

[kony]

Someone else can kick in here if I'm wrong, but I don't think a regular TV
tuner card would work for satellite. The transmission is different than
regular cable. Hence, the CATV tuner in the card wouldn't know what to do
with the data coming from the satellite feed. You could probably route
the signal to your computer via the S-video or RCA jacks after it passes
thru the satellite tuner, but that would assume that you then have some sort
of video input to the computer (like the input you can do with an
all-in-wonder card or other tuner cards). However, in this setup, you
wouldn't be using the tuner part of the card, just the video capture
portion.

Hope this makes sense....and good luck.

Mike

You are correct. The card can't tune it, only receive whatever signal
the satellite box is set to tune.


Dave

 

[SBreez]

Ive never used SAT TV but I dont see why it shouldnt. As long as the
feed to the TV is a regular feed which it should be or a regular TV
wouldnt be able to get channels.

The only problems is like with my digital box.
Digital cable stations usually give you an analog feed of say 80
channels or so . Those are the ones I can get with my TV tuner and
change channels with my PC channel changer.

But my DIgital box gets hundreds of channels and even music and the
radio. To get those channels - I have to rely on my digital box TV
remote to change the channels for my TV and that feed comes outs of
the S-video out of my digital and into the S-video in on my tuner
card.

You have this -

CABLE feed ------------------carries both analog and digital

Analog -----------------> can go into TV or Tuner card
can change channels without a digital box on TV
and you can plug the coax into TV card and change
channels with your PC. Kind of like all 80s analog channels
are there.

DIGITAL ----------------> Digital box have to change channels
with digital box remote control. Whatever is fed to the TV
the channel on your digital box is what is fed to your Tuner
card on the one S-video in channel. So you have like 80
or whatever analog + one S-video in - channel and you can
change your PC tuner to any of the 80 analog channels and
one channel for the S-video. You can change TO the svideo
channel on your PC but not whats on it - that feed is determined by
what channel your box is set to.

You tuner card has this :

----------> coax in to get the usual analog 70-80 channels

----------> RCA sound in Need both for Digital channels
----------> Svideo In

Doesnt SAT work by getting the local channels with an antenna
or basic cable analog feed? Then thats what you could change
in your PC and all the SAT channels I guess would be like the digital
box - you would keep it on Svideo all the time and change channels
with your SAT box remote. I know LAME but thats the way it is. If you
keep it on CNN anyway - you wont be changing channels all the time.

Ive seen some expensive digital TV cards but not sure how that works.

The s-video in is better quality anyway.
Not all cards have S-video in though most do. Some have that other
type - I forget the name of it at the moment. Early onset alzheimers.
Not all have stereo sound too. Not all work with Radeons - like
possibly the Avermedia card though that might have changed.

Thanks all. From what I've read it is pretty much impossible to control the
sat box but that is OK. Found a great site on Google I thought I would pass
on .. www.tv-cards.com .. More than I wanted to know :<)

 

[mcheu]

Looking to get a TV Tuner card for my computer and have a couple questions.
How well would a tuner card work with satellite TV? Since the signal has
passed through the sat box it is pretty much already "tuned" so I'm a bit
confused on this. Also , would the recording feature work with satellite?

Basically all I'm looking for is having a "CNN Window" while I'm on the
computer and maybe recording a few snatches of TV once in a while.

Dell Dim 4400
Win XP Home
ATI Radeon Pro 9000

The sat signal is "tuned". With a Tuner card, it the satellite box
would just send a channel 3 or 4 signal to the tuner card just as if
you had set it up with a real TV or a VCR. As for recording it? I
can't be 100% sure, but I would imagine so. If you can rig the TV
card to display channel 3, you can display and record anything your
satellite box sends to it. Of course, you won't be able to control
the satellite channel through your computer -- you'd still have to use
the remote for that.

If you're asking if you can rig up your PC as the satellite blackbox,
I don't know. I suppose it's possible, but I don't know how you'd go
about it.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

You are correct. The card can't tune it, only receive whatever signal
the satellite box is set to tune.

Not true if you have a Hauppauge Nexus-s/Nova-s with Common Interface.

ss.