LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Greetings all,

In putting together my media / gaming PC, I am now looking at tuner cards. There is a couple of questions I have and unfortunatly I cannot find any manuals on the website of the card makers to find an answer.

Does the TV Tuner card work with Comcast Digital Cable? I suspect the cable would come from the cable box to the PC, then the PC to the television. Is this how these things are connected? I suspect these devices work like a VCR. Do these things have a pass through - i.e. the PC does not have to be on when watching TV?

Also, what is a good brand? There are several choices like Hauppauge, KWorld, Leadtek, Visiontec, and so on. I have heard of only Leadtek and that is because they also make graphics cards.

Lastly, I am guessing the TV Tuner card will be compatible the nVidia 7800GTX. Is this correct? And will it conflict with SLI at all?

As you probably guessed, the whole media PC deal is new to me.

Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 7:58 pm Post subject:

As I understand it, you can get a good analog tuner card with hardware acceleration of MPEG2 encoding... then you have to buy ANOTHER tuner card for HDTV.

Guide Dog Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 8403 Location: MN

I've yet to hear of any digital cable capture card, this is because the cable company wants to control where you can watch digital cable they sell you a receiver box that will get you the digital channels and functions (as you described) much like a VCR, there is no direct way to watch Digital cable on your tv you will need one of these tuner boxes, and the same goes for your htpc.

However there are ways to work with this sytem and still give the htpc the control it deserves over the channel and what to watch. you can simply get an IR blaster for your HTPC and have that change the channel on the digital cable box so the HTPC can still record your shows with you hesitation.

I my self have a PVR-250 in my htpc, now if you want to get something with an mpeg decoder I'd get the pvr-350... both of these are fantastic cards with Good linux support through the IVTV program and mythtv (as well as knoppmyth)... if you want to get multiple capture cards right away I would recomend the pvr-500 a linux box basically see this cards as 2 pvr-250's this allows you to do thinks such as watch one show and record another or do picture in picture through the pvr.

No there isn't really a passthrough on an HTPC persay, they usually expect that you will be sending the out put through the graphics card on your computer and that will go into either an s-video port, composite, or a dvi connector on your TV rather then acting as a VCR and taking out channel 3 when you turn it on, most likely you'll want a $1-$2 splitter for your coxial cable.

Finially Yes you should be able to use your capture card with any graphics card that supports overlay (just about all of them that have been manufactured as cards that will fit in a modern computer.) weather it will cause a conflict with anything I don't know a driver change might be needed though I suspect that everything should work just fine.

What software were you planning on using for your htpc? anything in particular cause the sites that support the software will frequently have hardware recomendations.

anglachel wrote:
What software were you planning on using for your htpc? anything in particular cause the sites that support the software will frequently have hardware recomendations.

I haven't got that far yet, but I will be running Windows XP Media Center Edition. Is this all the software I need? If not, what is good?

Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 10:46 pm Post subject:

Also, I just discovered my TV (Loewe) has a VGA connector in the back with a choice of settings:

VGA 480
VGAHD 480
VGAHD 1080

I am curious as to how I can use this port with my Tuner card and/or nVidia 7800GTX. Any thoughts?

I tested this with my laptop (ATI dual-monitor capable) with the second monitor set at VGA resolution and it looks pretty damn good. I suppose I could use programs like WinDVD to use this monitor. Is this possible?

Mutt Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 121 Location: USA

I think the Digital Cable issue has been covered so i will not talk about that.

For Standard Def TV i think Hauppauge is one of the best companies. I use them everyday at work. I have used the PVR 150,250,350 and 500. The 500 is the best becuase it has two tuners built in so you can watch and record. The PVR 500 you can find for around 125.00.

You will need an additoinal tuner for HD and i like the Avermedia A180 becuase it works well and it is less than 80.00.

You will have no problems with any of these cards and a 7800GTX. My test system that is sitting next to me has a PVR500, Avermedia A180 and a 7800GTX and it runs great.

As far as software. If you are running MCE you will need an mpeg2 decoder program like Cyberlink or Intervideo's WinDVD. This is needed for TV playback. Besides that Media Center is great for a startup HTPC. There are better choices out there but they are way harder to configer and alot more work. MCE 2005 will tell you wether you like your HTPC and then once you want to do things that MCE cannot do you may want to change to another application like Sage TV or Meedio.

Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:39 am Post subject:

deagler wrote:
I think the Digital Cable issue has been covered so i will not talk about that.

For Standard Def TV i think Hauppauge is one of the best companies. I use them everyday at work. I have used the PVR 150,250,350 and 500. The 500 is the best becuase it has two tuners built in so you can watch and record. The PVR 500 you can find for around 125.00.

You will need an additoinal tuner for HD and i like the Avermedia A180 becuase it works well and it is less than 80.00.

You will have no problems with any of these cards and a 7800GTX. My test system that is sitting next to me has a PVR500, Avermedia A180 and a 7800GTX and it runs great.

As far as software. If you are running MCE you will need an mpeg2 decoder program like Cyberlink or Intervideo's WinDVD. This is needed for TV playback. Besides that Media Center is great for a startup HTPC. There are better choices out there but they are way harder to configer and alot more work. MCE 2005 will tell you wether you like your HTPC and then once you want to do things that MCE cannot do you may want to change to another application like Sage TV or Meedio.

That is wonderful stuff, thank you.