networked TV card questions

[faye]

Hi,
I am about to buy a tv card., may be the Winfast/Leadtek TV2000XP EXPERT NICAM (if it ain't bad)

i wanted to install it on my pc in my pc room and i want to watch it in my bedroom, can i do it?(i mean realtime)
2 pc are networked with dsl router.

and i want to know if i can view 2 channels at the same time on this 2 pc.

ps.. any good tv card or tuner suggestions? budget is around $70US

 

[wfay]

I would look at a TV Tuner with hardware mpeg encoding possibly an external usb2 box even.

I don't know how you would plan on installing it on one PC and watching the video on another, most of the drivers will write directly to the frame buffer in the TV computer and PCAnywhere, Remote desktop, etc will not export that video, it will just be a large blue or black box. Same thing happens when you have 2 video cards installed in a machine and try to play a DVD video on the secondary display -- the drivers write the image directly to the video card frame buffer in primary display, so you get a nice blue/black box on seconday, except in very special cases.

So your only option is to save the video directly to the hard drive and then play that currently-recording video file using some software on the bedroom PC. This is not ideal but it should work.

2 channels at the same time on one card is usually called PIP-- picture in picture.

If you buy 2 TV Tuner cards then you can have 2 tv streams at the same time assuming your computer is fast enough.

A final very silly option is to just buy a TV for your bedroom.

 

[faye]

oh thanks for the input...

what i mean by 2 channels at the same time on one card... i mean on 2 pc.. not the same screen. so that my gf can watch comedy on in my pc room, while i watch some sports in my room.

oh... so u mean i can only wait until the show is over. so it is saved on the disk and then play the file using the other pc?

i want to view it real time ne...

 

[Peter]

One channel per tuner, obviously. That means no recording while you watch something else, and no two people watching different things on different channels either.

You can however put as many TV tuner cards as you please into that system ...

Locally, you need to be aware that the usual graphics cards support only one video window, even if they support dual screens.

 

[JackBurton]

You're going to need a 2 tuner TV card to watch two shows at one time. And it ain't gonna be <$70. Save up some more money and get yourself one of these. You can watch one show while recording another or you should be able to stream one show to another PC while watching another show on your main machine. Use Beyond TV to stream the shows from your main machine (tuner card PC) to your remote machine.

If you just want a single tuner solution but still want to stream TV to a remote PC, I HIGHLY recommend this card. Got it, love it! And should be quite a bit cheaper than the 2 tuner card.

 

[faye]

oh may be i just forget about watching 2 channels at once thingy...

may be i should be looking for a tv box instead...

any suggestions? Anyone heard of COMPRO VideoMate action series
http://www.comprousa.com/products/vmaction.htm
Does it have NICAM?

or any other tv box?