TV Tuner

[FlakMonkey]

Okay, so I recently ordered my first card of this type...but have little to no idea how to get it running. I have a satellite box near the computer which is what I will be using, but I really don't know what kind of cables I will need to go to the card from the box.

Also, if I want to record a show like tivo, what does it record in? Will it bog down my PC when doing it? Thanks for whatever kind of help you guys can offer me!

 

[TimoneX]

Usually you'd use a 75 ohm coaxial cable, but S-VHS input will likely be available as well. I use Beyond TV to manage recordings & playback. It always records Mpeg 2 video which can then be transcoded to Mpeg 4 for greater compression if so desired. Recording video with my ATI Theater Pro 550 based tuner card using Beyond TV requires around 10% CPU time on this E6400 based system, and it was about the same on my s939 based system. It works perfectly in the background and I often don't even notice it's recording shows.

 

[FlakMonkey]

I'm curious, is there a guide somewhere on setting this up? I really have no idea where to start when I get this.

Where do the cords go from the back of this thing? One to the satellite box, then where? Something to my sound card & monitor?

Thanks for the info Timone, put my heart at ease about one aspect of this, don't have to worry about it eating up my CPU.

 

[TimoneX]

You haven't mentioned exactly which tuner card you're getting. The only guide you should require should come with your specific tuner device. I have experience with ATI based tuner cards, integrated tuner video cards (ATI AIW & Matrox), and also Hauppage tuners. I did have a Dish Network tuner connected to one of the AIW cards to record from at one time, and all I did was connnect the SVideo output from the Dish box to the SVideo input on the AIW card and the L & R Audio input to the soundcard. The AIW series has a line that you connect to the sound card to pick up the signal for recording. I currently just have an analog 75ohm cable line connected to a PCIx theater 550 card. It records both audio & video right from that input without any fanfare. The quality is as expected using coax...good...not great. This type of setup makes programs like Beyond TV shine, but with a seperate converter box, such as a digital cable or satellite converter things get a bit more complicated. You can either just run line in to the computer via Svideo & RCA audio and handle channel switching with the converter set top box or you can try to get the set top box to accept instruction from a computer program, which I believe is possible, but I've not attempted myself.