INTERACT FORUM

Windows => Television => Topic started by: jolo on April 30, 2009, 01:47:16 am

Title: Is it worth getting a TV tuner or direct Internet TV ?
Post by: jolo on April 30, 2009, 01:47:16 am

I would very much like your opinion on watching TV on a PC.

For many years, I used to have various ATI Radeon all-in-wonder cards that included a TV tuner.
I currently think it is better to separate the functionality between a graphics card and a multi-media tuner.

I have been without a TV tuner on my PC for about two years and I have been waiting for some of the technology and industry to shake out and decide "what it wants to do".

Here are my questions:

• With the growing availability of watching TV directly from the web, is a TV tuner something that is worth getting ?
  
  
• On my TV, I have a "box", which allows me to watch HD TV, TV and movies on demand that has DVR capability to record shows on the box, to see later. (Comcast Cable) I have a HDMI link from my cable box to my TV
  
  
• I have a HDMI connection from my Ultra Divx Certified,"play about anything", cheapo, upshifting,  Philips DVP5990 stand alone DVD player.
  
  
• I would like to have similar functionality with a TV tuner on my PC, unfortunately, if I don't have the same digital cable box, connected to the TV tuner, I would only be Actually, I don't really know if I had my cable box connected, if there will be some additional scrambling of the signal from the TV in hardware and software on my PC.
  
  
• Could anyone recommend a particular TV tuner that would could give high quality input, a myriad of TV stations and allows for reliable capturing ?
  
  
• Does anyone think that getting a TV tuner that is either USB or an internal card is somewhat obsolete ?
  
  
• Anyone use some of the Internet TV feeds that are available with free or with a subscription that they would recommend
  
  

Thanks in advance.

Jon

Title: Re: Is it worth getting a TV tuner or direct Internet TV ?
Post by: JimH on April 30, 2009, 07:04:24 am

There's a link on our wiki that is a good starting point:

http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Television

I use two USB sticks (about $70) on three machines.  They work very well for Over The Air (OTA) signals.

Check the Hauppauge HD PVR.  We recently added support.

MC13 will work fine as a PVR.  We've spent a lot of time on that part of the program recently.  I'd recommend a 1TB drive, though smaller drives will work.

Check Hulu.com and ABC.com.  Both have some HD quality streams.