peter said:
If you go to the Hauppage website you will find a variety of tuners to chose
from...they work well.
They also come with software for watching and recording TV.
I believe that the ability to watch/record off air TV requires a add on
piece of hardware...like an adaptor to convert the antena wires to a coaxial
cable input to the TV card.
peter
That is a Balun, or balanced to unbalanced transformer. It converts
300 ohm rabbit ears, to 75 ohm coax cable format. From there, you use
a coax cable to connect to the TV card. I got my previous Balun's with
my TV set.
The rabbit ears cable has two wires with tabs on the end. The tabs go under
the screw heads. The 75 ohm coax uses the other connector. Once you have
the TV tuner card in your hands (still in antistatic bag), take it to
Radio Shack, pick up a Balun like this one, plus enough cables and
connectors to do the job. Every component after the Balun will be
rated as 75 ohms, including the video switch. You might need an F
series female-female, and the coax cable (male-male). Or something
like that.
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062054
For my broadcast TV setup, I use:
UHF Bowtie --- Balun --- 20dB amp --- 100ft coax --- video switch ---> TV
Antenna w. FM |
(Portable) filter +---> to TV tuner
The FM filter is a switchable option on the amp, and doesn't make too much
difference where I am. The amp does help with fringe stations, of which
PBS was an option at one time, but has since disappeared. But the amp
won't fix problems like multipath - it is not a miracle worker.
The purpose of the 100ft of coax, is to allow the antenna to be set up
far away from the computer, reducing EMI pickup from the "computer room".
Signal quality is far from perfect, and it is an odd day indeed, where
the signal quality is sufficient for recording on my TV tuner
card (BT878 based). In my house, the only source clean enough for recording
purposes, is a commercial VHS tape, played back from my VCR. I don't
have cable TV.
You can start with a rabbit ears and a balun, and see what the quality is
like with that. I find the amplifier makes a useful difference for
direct TV viewing, but if there is any snow in the picture, recording
it for playback on the computer is a waste of time. Especially if you
are getting "hum bars" or multipath, it only gets worse on the computer.
A rabbit ears is good for channels 2-13. Above 13, a UHF antenna is better.
Depending on propagation conditions, I sometimes switch between the two
antennas on a daily basis. Like if all I can get is channel 4, I might
switch to the rabbit ears. (The things we do to avoid paying for cable...)
Paul
