[URGENT] Which TV tuner card works with digital TV?

[yalag]

I am in a urgent need for a working tv tuner card for work related reasons. I am planning to grab a tv tuner card from the list below:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1427&

However, I am not familiar with TV technologies. I believe that my cable service (Rogers) right now is a digital one and I am not sure which card will work with a digial cable service.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

 

[videopho]

I'd recommend a Kworld ATSC 110 tuner card.
It is truly plug & play and it even works in my window x64 O/S.
It's also inexpensive.

 

[yalag]

will it work with digital channels? Even those that are above 125?

 

[KutterMax]

My understanding is that none of the existing tuner cards will receive digital cable signals, rather a digital cablecard will be required for that. Currently Windows XP/MCE do not support this, but Vista is supposed to. The idea is that you will get a cablecard from your cable company and install this into PC.

Several cards support OTA digital stations (over-the-air) such as the ATI TV Wonder 650 - but this is quite different.

 

[GimpyFuzznut]

You can get OTA digital which for the most part is non-existent (compared to your subscription cable).

You can't get cable company digital channels at all because they are encrypted. The cable company does usually have crap channels unencrypted, or perhaps the channels they offer for free on analog, but this is rare and usually only for a few channels.

Basically, you still need a set top box. With a set top box, you can just plug the svideo output of that into a tuner card and then tune the channels via the set top box or with an IR blaster. That's pretty much the only option from what I understand and you don't need anything fancy for that - most likely not even a tuner card if you have a VIVO video card (something with svideo input and capture software).

I see that you have Rogers, which is more or less the same as Videotron here in Quebec - so what I posted above applies. In Tdot or Ontario region, OTA is OK and you will get a handful of channels but nothing special and nothing worth the money (gonna spend a hundred bucks for OTA card for CBC?). So like I said, best idea is to get a second used STB, maybe on Craigslist and then plug into a tuner card with svideo or directly into your video card. If anyone can recommend the best solution for this, I'd be interested to know, because I'm in the same boat trying to setup cable in my room through my PC (not even interested in recording, just watching and streaming).

 

[videopho]

The Kworld ATSC 110 (OTA HDTV) tuner is supposed to be QAM ready.
I have not yet tried that feature to see if that works with cable channels but from what I've gathered to hear that it does work on both SAT and Cable channels.
Go top www.avsforum.com site and search for HDTV for computer, there is ton of info about this.

 

[GimpyFuzznut]

QAM ready is nice in the US but for you, in Ontario (I'm guessing because of Rogers), it doesn't mean anything and won't for some time. Everything here in encrypted and won't be open any time in our near future and CableCard won't be available here either because our wonderful Canadian government and their watch dog agencies love us, the consumer, so much. So for you, OTA sucks and QAM ain't going to happen. So, paying the cable co is the only real option.