Monitor, tv tuner card, DTV OTA singals - Questions...

[mikedahammer]

Here is the situation:

I have a friend who is around 70 years old. He has a decent rig that has an ATI all in one tv tuner card. He does not subscribe to cable and uses over-the-air antenna for his programming.

He also has a nice 1080p 46" samsung and he recieves all the local channels in great high quality HD. He now wants to eliminate the converter box hooked up to his pc as well as get a better picture on his 30" viewsonic n3000w. Right now he does not have a converter box hooked up to his Samsung. Do you think when it switches in February he will need to hook one up?

The card would have to be a PCI card as his rig is AGP and has no pci-e slots. His comp is a few years old. I was thinking about this

http://www.leadtek.com/eng/tv_tuner/...&pronameid=220


Also, according to viewsonic his monitor is hdtv ready but i do not see how it could recieve an hdtv signal. I could not find a tv tuner card that had 20 pin dvi out.

So i need some help: Help me find a solution to remove the analog to digital converter box as well as recieve hdtv singal on his monitor from a OTA analog cable and via his PC input.

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: mikedahammer
He also has a nice 1080p 46" samsung and he recieves all the local channels in great high quality HD...Right now he does not have a converter box hooked up to his Samsung. Do you think when it switches in February he will need to hook one up?

No. The "switch" is only to kill the OTA analog signal, the OTA digital signal has likely been around in his area for quite some time now...which is why he's viewing high quality HD right now.

He does not have an analog-to-digital converter box. He has a digital-to-analog converter box (all AIW AGP cards are analog). I'm curious that he has a converter box at all, considering the analog signals haven't been killed yet. But I digress...this is probably right up his alley. I've had LeadTek before, haven't been impressed...

 

[L00PY]

FWIW, you can find a ton of USB HDTV tuners out there for under $100. The cheapest one on Newegg is something like $30 AR. No idea as to the quality of that particular model, but I'm sure you can find a decent one for around $50.

 

[Foxery]

Originally posted by: mikedahammer
Also, according to viewsonic his monitor is hdtv ready but i do not see how it could recieve an hdtv signal. I could not find a tv tuner card that had 20 pin dvi out.

Nope, the Viewsonic is a cheapo that doesn't appear to have any TV tuner at all - it's just a monitor. "HDTV ready" is a marketing gimmick and a trick. Official specs So, this one will need an external box to receive a signal, (like the ones that the government sent out coupons for,) no matter what, whereas the Samsung most likely has one built-in like you'd expect.

I don't think you'll ever find a set-top box with a DVI plug; TVs tend to only use the various coaxial-style cables, S-Video, and HDMI.

 

[grimlykindo]

If you get him a pci hdtv card it will output throug the video cards dvi port so his monitor is good - Also all 46 inch samsungs have built in digital tuners so just plug a christmas tree style hd antenna in the back and he will get hdtv. At least that's how I got my OTA hdtv setup...

 

[Pederv]

The Samsung can be hooked up directly to the cable and when the local stations stop broadcasting in analog it will still receive thier digital siganls. I had my AIW hooked dirrectly to the cable for years, problem is when the local stations stop broadcasting in analog he won't get them unless the cable company converts the digital signal to analog.

When one of the local stations did thier digital signal test I had to go through the cable box to convert the digital signal to analog in order to see the channel.

I'm considering upgrading my video card and getting a seperate HDTV tuner card before Feb.