TV Tuner rec. - digital v. analog

[imported_Septimus]

Looking for some advice on a PCI TV tuner for my PC but am ignorant about TV signals as I don't own a TV and thus haven't ordered cable in years! It should be able to handle just two things, really:

- Analog or digital cable signal (i.e. I'd like to be able to order digital cable without having to get some kind of box to go along with my computer)
- Input from a game console (PS2 specifically, but any, really)

I'm a little foggy on some of the issues, though. I have a ViewSonic vx2025 20" wide-screen monitor that is not 'HDTV-ready' -- does that simply mean I can't plug an HDTV signal right into the monitor (not trying to do that) or that there would be no point in getting any kind of HDTV decoder/receiver for my PC?

Also, HDTV is digital but digital is not necessarily HDTV, correct?

If I can properly display HDTV with something like the Fusion5 card, I'm willing to pay the premium for it, but I'm not enough of a videophile that I really care a huge amount about HDTV - I'd just like to be able to take advantage of the equipment that I have. Don't care about sound decoding either as my Audigy 4 Pro can handle that.

The choices seem to be something like the following:
- Hauppage PVR-350
- ATI Theatre 550 Pro
- DVICO Fusion5
- MyHD MDP-130

I know the first two don't support HDTV, but I'm unclear as to what I would need if I just ordered digital cable from my provider.

Many thanks for your able assistance!
S

 

[SynthDude2001]

You can't really get digital cable on your PC without a cable box because those signals are generally encrypted...and PC HDTV tuners have no way of decrypting that (for now; CableCard tuners are supposedly coming later this year). You can get OTA (antenna)/unencrypted cable HDTV though, which is what I do (I have the MDP-130). Unencrypted channels on cable are generally limited to the local HDTV channels in your area, though sometimes people get lucky and can see a few channels they're probably not "supposed" to.

Any tuner should also have video inputs (Composite/S-Video 480i, but NOT Component for HD) for use with a game console. About your monitor, "HD Ready" usually refers to an HDTV monitor with no tuner, that has Component and/or other HD inputs. VGA/DVI can also carry HD resolutions of course, but generally they don't classify computer monitors as "HD Ready". Any HDTV tuner you add to the computer (at this point) will work regardless of what monitor you have. You are also correct on the distinction between HDTV and just Digital TV (HDTV is a subset of DTV).

If you live relatively near a city, you can usually get several HDTV channels over the air (this would be the national broadcast networks like NBC, ABC, FOX, PBS, etc.). You can look at antennaweb.org to see where your local broadcast towers are and how far away from you they are. Generally with a good indoor antenna, picking up full-power stations at 25 miles or less is no problem. Any more than that, or if the stations aren't at full power, you might need to look into an outdoor antenna or possibly getting your channels unencrypted over cable if your provider does that (most do, from my understanding). If you are in New York (City) as your profile indicates, I imagine you shouldn't have much if any trouble getting your OTA HDTV locals with a good directional indoor antenna. I use the Zenith Silver Sensor myself and it's worked well for me.

In any case, if regular digital cable is your main concern, unless your provider happens to leave everything unencrypted (which is quite rare), there's no way to directly tune that on your computer; you'd have to use a cable box and hook the outputs up to a tuner/capture card or your monitor (and then of course you'd have to change channels on the box). Sometimes you can use Firewire to hook up the cable box too, but I've only read about this (no direct experience), so I don't know if that's suitable for watching in real-time. Plus, not all cable boxes have enabled Firewire outputs.

Hopefully that explains a bit...

 

[imported_Septimus]

That does help - and I live in Manhattan so there should be ample supply of just about anything, whether over air or wire.

Forget the 'don't want the cable box' requirement then. If cablecards are coming out later this year, then perhaps a solution would be to buy something very basic (one of the $30-$40 cards on Newegg) and then wait until I can get something later this year that will do everything?

And if I didn't want to do that, given that I would have a cable box, how different, really, is an MDP-130 to a Hauppgae PVR-350 or Theater 550 pro? Are we talking night and day?

 

[Peter]

Just a general note ... for digital cable outside the US (Europe and Asia mainly), PCI cards with a license key card slot have long existed (and worked). The required feature is called CI (Common Interface) slot.

If you want to keep things analog-only for now, then KWorld's 7131R card gets you the latest hardware for doing /that/. I have no experience with their software though.

 

[imported_Septimus]

There seem to be a lot of cards in the $30-$50 range -- the 7131R appears to be one of them, except it's out of stock at NewEgg and I can't find it anywhere else.

Any other recommendations? What about the 7131R makes it current/better than the competition? I am fairly technical, just ignorant in this particular realm of things - I see each manufacturer offering several different cards and I don't see a perceptible difference between some of them.

Thanks for all the help!