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Author Topic: 1st try at a TV card  (Read 2342 times)

boydn

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1st try at a TV card
« on: April 04, 2008, 05:52:45 am »

Building an HTPC mainly for audio but would like to record OTA HD.  Did some searching here and am still cornfused.  Could you all share which cards you use and what kind of problems to expect.  Can you get any kind of channel guide with this kind of system?
Thanks
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raym

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Re: 1st try at a TV card
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2008, 12:21:30 am »

Building an HTPC mainly for audio but would like to record OTA HD.  Did some searching here and am still cornfused.  Could you all share which cards you use and what kind of problems to expect.  Can you get any kind of channel guide with this kind of system?
Thanks

Hi. At the top of this board is a listing of all the offically supported tuners. For DVB-T (which is all I can comment on) I've had good success with the DVICO cards. I've experienced some minor issues using other brand cards such as slow(er) channel changing. MC doesn't offer an EPG of any kind yet. You'll need to source this via some another means.

Problems to expect? This is difficult to predict but to help minimise the typical issues, it's worth investing in a modern, fairly fast video card and to use quality decoders/filters eg, Cyberlink or Pure Video (for nVidia cards). These make the most of the hardware acceleration features on the video cards. Yes, a fast CPU will handle this task fine also but based on my experience, it's still a good idea to off-load this processing onto the VPU if possible - especially for HD streams.

You don't really state how you plan on connecting your PC to your display (or what your display type is). DVI/HDMI connections give the best results hands down.

Other than this, MC is the way to go for TV. There's still some minor fetures missing but the developers are closing the gap on this on (what seems like) a daily basis. 

Good luck!
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RKM Smart Home - www.rkmsmarthome.com.au
Z-Wave Home Automation

boydn

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Re: 1st try at a TV card
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2008, 03:13:34 am »

Thanks for the reply.  Guess I need to go to school before I ask stupid questions or buy.  Don't even know what a DVB-T is. 
The original plan was just build a box to play my Lossless audio but, figure I might as well capture TV.
You said there's no EPG.  May be another stupid question but, what good is TV without a program guide?
PC will be connected to a 42" panny plasma via HDMI.
Thanks again
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raym

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Re: 1st try at a TV card
« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2008, 04:16:43 am »

Don't even know what a DVB-T is. 

It stands for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial and is the standard used for digital tv broadcasting in most parts of the world. In North America, ATSC is the standard so the type of tv card you can use will depend on where you live. MC supports both standards.

You said there's no EPG.  May be another stupid question but, what good is TV without a program guide? 

It's a valid question. It hasn't been implemented yet for whatever reason but I believe it's on JRiver's agenda. For now, I'm using another program to handle my PVR requirements.

PC will be connected to a 42" panny plasma via HDMI. 

Nice  ;)
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RKM Smart Home - www.rkmsmarthome.com.au
Z-Wave Home Automation
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