TV on a PC

[Paladin Blake]

I'm about to go to college and my dorm room has a cable connection (i assume coaxial -- the website is vague) in every room. Now since I have a very decent gaming rig and don't have a spare TV to take with me, I was wondering how to go about watching analog cable TV through my computer? I'm fairly certain I'll need a TV card, but will this work? Do I need any additional software? Video recording isn't a huge deal. It might be nice every once in a while, but I don't care too much about it right now.

Specs that matter (as far as I know):
C2D e6600 OC'd
2 GB RAM
HD 4870
22-inch ACER widescreen LCD

I'm more than willing to edit for clarity or move this if it's in the wrong section. Thanks in advance.

 

[alcoholbob]

If you goto a local Fry's (or any large electronics store) they should have a zillion TV to PC PCI or USB cards for this purpose.

 

[cubby1223]

TV tuner cards work well on Pentium !!! machines with 256mb ram. Your system is fine.

 

[Paladin Blake]

So most TV cards can stream SDTV via coaxial or S-Video or whatever straight to my monitor? Cause if so, then that's exactly what I'm looking for! Are there any cards that are particularly better than others?

 

[1sikbITCH]

You can spend well over $100 on a very nice digital (or even HDTV) dual tuner card (meaning it will record 2 HD shows at once while you are away) or you can spend 10.00 on Ebay and get a bottom of the barrel analog card that will allow you to view the channel you are watching and supposedly schedule recording as well.

I have a middle of the road card (ATI Theatre 650 Pro) and a couple cheapies; one of which I just bought for about 10.00 off Ebay. It does the trick, just not as nicely as the $100 card.

Also, the bundled software is often buggy and crappy. A good free program to use is DScaler.

 

[Modelworks]

Dscaler is the way to go.
I have it running on an old compaq P3-933, with 384MB ram and integrated video and it works great for watching tv on a spare monitor.

 

[Paladin Blake]

Ok. Thanks a lot. You answered all of my questions.

 

[Oyeve]

Or you can get an external tuner from the egg, Kworld has one for like 50 bucks. Dont even need a PC, just the monitor and it can do 1680x1050 WS.

 

[thereds]

Is there any way to connect a PC's video card to an AV receiver? Assume it's an DVI/HDMI connection.

edit - connect and get a picture! I've tried and don't get a picture to show up on my tv.

 

[Reel]

Originally posted by: thereds
Is there any way to connect a PC's video card to an AV receiver? Assume it's an DVI/HDMI connection.

edit - connect and get a picture! I've tried and don't get any picture to show up on my tv.

I do it so it is possible. The trick might be that your video card is polling the EDID from the receiver and getting an incompatible value. I had to turn that off in mine and force output to a certain value. Also, verify that it is indeed working by plugging it in skipping the receiver.

 

[thereds]

Originally posted by: Reel

Originally posted by: thereds
Is there any way to connect a PC's video card to an AV receiver? Assume it's an DVI/HDMI connection.

edit - connect and get a picture! I've tried and don't get any picture to show up on my tv.

I do it so it is possible. The trick might be that your video card is polling the EDID from the receiver and getting an incompatible value. I had to turn that off in mine and force output to a certain value. Also, verify that it is indeed working by plugging it in skipping the receiver.

Yes, it is working fine when I skip the receiver and plug it in directly to the TV.

How do I turn off EDID and force output a value?

Thanks

 

[Reel]

Originally posted by: thereds

Originally posted by: Reel

Originally posted by: thereds
Is there any way to connect a PC's video card to an AV receiver? Assume it's an DVI/HDMI connection.

edit - connect and get a picture! I've tried and don't get any picture to show up on my tv.

I do it so it is possible. The trick might be that your video card is polling the EDID from the receiver and getting an incompatible value. I had to turn that off in mine and force output to a certain value. Also, verify that it is indeed working by plugging it in skipping the receiver.

Yes, it is working fine when I skip the receiver and plug it in directly to the TV.

How do I turn off EDID and force output a value?

Thanks

The Wikipedia article and other similar topics have led me to believe that Powerstrip will let you do that. I have done mine with Linux so unless you use Linux, I cannot guide you any further through the process unfortunately.

Another quick sanity check to verify is that the receiver will actually pass through the HDMI video from another source like a game console or DVD player.