TV Tuner Cards - how much CPU/RAM & resources do they use?

[wjgollatz]

I like to watch TV while doing some computing, or even some mmorpg gaming. And I am tinkering with the idea of getting a TV tuner card and having its output sent to a monitor that I can switch for a dual monitor setup. How much of a drain are the TV Tuner cards on a system?

 

[Billb2]

Originally posted by: wjgollatz
How much of a drain are the TV Tuner cards on a system?

About this much <----------------->

Seriously, it depends on the card, the resolution, and what you're viewing.

And most games won't allow a second monitor to be used.

 

[Schmide]

Just get something like this

Text

 

[Modelworks]

If you are just watching a svideo connect source , its about 1-2% cpu usage on a 3Ghz pc, single core. It uses overlay feature of the video card, so really low usage.
If you want to use something like dscaler to view and enhance the picture it can use 30-50%.

 

[wjgollatz]

Thanks for replies.

Now, what about recording TV input? Nothing high def, just regular analog.

 

[Modular]

Originally posted by: wjgollatz
Thanks for replies.

Now, what about recording TV input? Nothing high def, just regular analog.

Most cards have an MPEG encoder built into them, so there should be very low usage of the CPU, it should just be active for read/writes really. The HDD is another story though, it's going to be thrashing constantly when recording and will only get worse if you are playing a game.