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TV tuner advice needed

are you saying you'd have the cable box sitting next to the PC? because then you just need a video capture card, not a tv tuner

those are very very cheap for one w/ decent quality...
 
Originally posted by: CP5670
I'm looking for a TV tuner to watch stuff on my computer, just a basic SD signal out of a cable box.
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OK, you're receiving two signals: traditional analog and modern digital. The cable box will output the analog signal for your TV tuner card, but there's no way for your TV tuner card to change channels. That's required if you want to schedule recordings in advance via some kind of TV guide software. So you have two options:

  1. Use a TV tuner card in place of the cable box; you lose channels (i.e. over 125).
  2. Get and configure a USB-UIRT or similar IR blaster to mimic your cable box's remote.

Unless you really want the digital channels, I'd just replace the cable box with the PVR-150. Note that if you decide to go the other route, the USB-UIRT is a separate USB device that is not tied to any particular TV tuner card (and could probably be used with a capture card). In that case, you would need to "train" the USB-UIRT by pressing buttons on your cable box's remote.

I'm not sure whether Hauppauge's included WinTV-PVR app supports the USB-UIRT, but it probably does. You'll want to make sure that you get some sort of PVR software in the box with your TV card or from a third party like BeyondTV or SageTV. These cost a lot. I think there's also something called GBR (or GVB, or some such name) that's free.

The Happauge PVR-150 seems to be fairly popular from what I'm seeing, but there are a couple of different variations of it and I can't tell the difference between them:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...0&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

Which one (if any of these) should I get? I don't have MCE.
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None actually require MCE--it's probably just a marketing agreement to throw the name around a lot for Microsoft's benefit. Retail cards will include a remote and the WinTV-PVR software that actually tunes and displays video, lets you schedule recordings, etc. OEM cards on the other hand only come with a driver disc, the card, and maybe a cable or something. Only go with an OEM model if you will be using a third-party TV app like Sage.
 
The "cable box" I referred to is actually a satellite receiver (sorry for the confusion, I was in a hurry earlier) that takes in encrypted signals, so the connection needs to go through that. In any case, I don't need to change the channels from the computer. I basically just want the computer to be able to accept a composite or s-video signal (along with the audio) for displaying and recording.

The TV and satellite box are in another room, but I can route in cables from there. I'm doing this so I can watch TV while doing other things on the computer simultaneously.

If I don't need a full blown TV tuner, what is a good video capture card or USB device? I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to this stuff and don't know what to look for in them.

I'm not sure whether Hauppauge's included WinTV-PVR app supports the USB-UIRT, but it probably does. You'll want to make sure that you get some sort of PVR software in the box with your TV card or from a third party like BeyondTV or SageTV. These cost a lot. I think there's also something called GBR (or GVB, or some such name) that's free.
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Yes, I was planning to use GBPVR. Although Newegg reviews are hardly reliable, it seems almost all of them say that the software that comes with most of these cards is very buggy.
 
I'd like to help, but I have very little experience with capture devices. If you are adding this to your main rig, you should look for a capture device that does hardware encoding to MPEG2. If you go external and can spare a firewire port, I would recommend that over USB as there's a "standard" interface for firewire capture devices (i.e. like camcorders). The Hauppauge cards can act as internal capture devices BTW--it's just a matter of cost.

EDIT: Definitely use S-Video instead of composite if your satellite STB supports both.
 
Yeah, it can output both. I guess I might as well look for a capture card if that's all I need and the prices will be lower. Thanks for the replies.
 
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