TV Tuner Cards Are Mindboggling

October 31, 2007 8:59 PM

So, my TV just died and I'm wondering whether a TV-tuner card in the PC isn't the way to go to replace it...

I'm a college student and was using a pretty old TV-VHS combo which decided to eat a tape and kill itself, it's very definitely dead as a doornail now. I'm looking around at replacement options, but everything seems awfully expensive for what is, ultimately, a smaller screen with a lower resolution than my shiny LCD monitor on my PC.

I wonder, thus, whether it wouldn't be a good idea to get a TV tuner card for the PC and just watch/record my TV on the PC. I'm very technology and computer competent, but my quick survey of the options has left me pretty baffled. Especially since I know all TV is supposed to move to digital pretty soon, it seems like cards only talk about analog-in? To put it simply, I have no idea what all of the stats on tuner cards are and just want one that I can throw in the PC, connect to the coax cable coming out of the wall, and watch TV on the PC. If I can record it too, all the better, but if not...no worse than a normal TV, right?

Here are my PC's relevant stats, for what it's worth:
Athlon 3500+ Processor
2 GB Ram
ATI X850XT Video Card
2x80GB Hard drives about 1/2 full
1x 120GB hard drive not used for anything
Soundblaster Audigy 2 Gamer sound card

If I could manage to keep this under $100, that'd be nifty, but a little over might be tolerable. At the end of the day, is this something worthwhile to look into, or should I just go buy a cheap TV?

posted by Rallon to computers & internet (9 comments total)

You're a college student, so I assume you've watched plenty of stuff on your PC. If you're happy with the quality of the experience (ie; PC noise), and you've got access to an external antenna, you should be able to get anything described as a "tv tuner card" for access to TV programs. Then just plug in the antenna.

If you're using rabbit ears, I would normally expect the interference to be too much.
posted by krisjohn at 9:13 PM on October 31, 2007

Almost any PCI TV tuner card will work, they run about $60.

Here's a bunch (newegg.com).

I personally have the WinTV-PVR 150 (PCI) and have used it for years without problems. If you are interested in HD, I have the Pinnacle HD Pro stick (USB), which captures HD over the air and also regular cable via coax.
posted by mphuie at 9:23 PM on October 31, 2007

The quality isn't too much of an issue; even cheap ones look halfway decent*, and your hardware is more than up to the task. Hauppauge has several analog cards that do the trick nicely. I've also had decent experiences with sub 50 dollar Avers. They're generally PCI cards. If you're using a laptop you'll have to go with a USB or pcmcia model. These are a bit more expensive.

The question is what type of signal you're receiving through that magical cable. If it's an antenna line or unencrypted analog cable, you're fine. Get a cheap name brand card and Bob's you're uncle.

If you're not sure what you have, an easy rule of thumb is that if you can receive a channel on a TV without a cable box, it's analog and unencrypted.

If your signal is encrypted, things get more complicated. You can choose to use a cheap TV card in conjunction with a cable box, changing the channels directly through the cable box, or get an IR blaster and have your computer control the cable box through IR.

Either way you get the added boon of being able to run DVR software on your computer; many tv cards come with halfway decent dvr software, but you can also consider mythtv or Windows MCE

*: It won't look the same. Watching low-res NTSC on a high res monitor makes the deficiencies of the signal much more obvious. Honestly though, the biggest issue is that people tend to sit much closer to their computer screens than they would to a TV.
posted by Capostrophe at 9:36 PM on October 31, 2007

I'm in a similar position and opted not to get a capture card. Instead I got a sling box and can tune in with which ever computer is handy.
posted by mce at 10:13 PM on October 31, 2007

Buy a TV card and build yourself a PVR
posted by WizKid at 7:12 AM on November 1, 2007

I put an ATI All-In-Wonder card into my computer just about a year ago, and I have nothing bad to say about it. I knew when I bought it that it would have some limitations vs a TV, but those limitations are so small that I wont even bother listing them here. I think it works great.
posted by SDH30 at 8:19 AM on November 1, 2007

I just did this in a somewhat more involved way (MythTV), but I can vouch for the quality of the pcHDTV 5500 card. It does ATSC (analog) and all varieties of QAM (digital) rather nicely. It's mostly designed for Linux/MythTV use, so I have no idea how good the Windows drivers are. It runs for $130 plus shipping.

One thing is that if you're planning on tuning in digital signals, cables all of a sudden matter. I had to replace the ages-old coax cable that I was using when it suddenly started dropping signal.
posted by Skorgu at 8:29 AM on November 1, 2007

I got a dual tuner Adaptec external USB 2.0 tuner and Beyond TV. (BTW there are no issues with USB bandwidth and two video streams at once... it works fine). The Adaptec came with a splitter that I used on an already split signal. The resulting video is decent, not superb. The quality would be better if it wasn't split. The Beyond TV software is great but a little glitchy here and there.

The Adaptec tuner can only tune analog cable directly, however it can drive your cable box (the way a Tivo does) and use the video output from that cable box if you want to go that route. This would allow digital cable.

This setup is probably more expensive than you want but I thought I'd chime in with my experience with PC TV type gear. All in all I love it. I have a Tivo in the same room but share it with my wife. This gives me a private 2 tuner setup all my own. It's great during football season.

Oh yeah, I can also take the MPGs that BeyondTV records, edit out the commercials (using VideoRedo, also highly recommended) and convert them to Divx to play on my portable player or on my main TV (using Netgear Player streaming from a Twonky uPnP server on my Buffalo Terastation).
posted by jockc at 11:35 AM on November 1, 2007

The proprietary software that ships with tuner cards is notoriously awful. So, if you are using it for watching live TV, look for a tuner that is supported by Dscaler. If you want PVR functionality, read someone elses suggestions :P

ATI All in Wonders are great, except for one minor nag.. You can't drag the TV window to a desktop supported by an off board display adapter. So, if you are running three displays, two on your All in Wonder and one on a PCI card, you can't display the All in Wonder's TV tuner on the display driven by the PCI card.

I'm now using a USB2 TV tuner, and I don't like it much.. The native software will only work on my primary display. It does work through Dscaler, but then the picture begins to lag the audio whenever there is CPU load.
posted by Chuckles at 11:31 PM on November 1, 2007