tv tuner - usb only, info needed

clubcrown

Hi,

I realise theres been lots of tv tuner questions on this forum, but after a search nothing really answers what I want to know.

I have limited space inside the PC for a PCI card, and I have 2 monitors; what I want to do is add a USB tv tuner card, watch the football on one monitor while doing PC stuff on the other, that sort of thing.

There is no cable or digital TV in the house at the moment, so I guess an analogue tuner is what I need.

So;

1. USB is my only option; anyone using one? Any recommendations?

2. Given that this is analog, and I'm not connecting it to Sky or anything else, what channels can I get? I presume the 2 RTEs, TV3, Tg4 and thats it?

3. How does sound work - does the tuner need to pass through the sound card on the PC in some way?

4. Given the above limitations (usb only, analogue) are there any other options I'm missing?

Everything online seems to be geared towards digital tuners.

sweno

Have a look here might meet your needs...

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=120167

Tom Dunne

clubcrown wrote:

1. USB is my only option; anyone using one? Any recommendations?

Sounds like it. I use the Hauppauge USB2 PVR. The analogue reception is dire, I had to purchase one of those ariel/booster units in Lidl this week. Even then, the quality is just about watchable. (Hooked up to my sky box, it is fine, btw, so it is purely a problem with the analogue reception).

clubcrown wrote:

2. Given that this is analog, and I'm not connecting it to Sky or anything else, what channels can I get? I presume the 2 RTEs, TV3, Tg4 and thats it?

TV-wise, yes. Though the model I have also has an FM tuner built in, so I can pick up radio stations.

clubcrown wrote:

3. How does sound work - does the tuner need to pass through the sound card on the PC in some way?

No, it travels down the USB connection into your sound card.

clubcrown wrote:

4. Given the above limitations (usb only, analogue) are there any other options I'm missing?

Not that I can think of.

KdjaCL

PC world sell one for 30 quid.

Works fine with an Aerial or NTL or Sky. You will have to lower the resolution of the tv monitor to get near full screen.



kdjac

anthony4335

I have the hauppauge USB2 card, and find it to do the job quite well,initially had bought a cheaper one but had loads of problems with the sound,or lack of. It does not eat into processor power, as it has onboard decoding(so the back of the box says) So I would recommend this one.

clubcrown

anthony4335 wrote:

I have the hauppauge USB2 card, and find it to do the job quite well,initially had bought a cheaper one but had loads of problems with the sound,or lack of. It does not eat into processor power, as it has onboard decoding(so the back of the box says) So I would recommend this one.

Thanks for all the answers.

The Hauppauge is 145 quid!!! I was thinking more long the lines of a cheap option, its purely for watching tv, I don't really need the whole PVR thing. In the short term I'm thinking of watching world cup games while working on the other monitor :-)

With a bog standard tuner, it then becomes more about the quality of the ariel, right? So if I had a booster ariel in the house I could hook that up to a relatively cheap tuner?

Tom Dunne

No, not exactly.

If you get a device without hardware encoding, your PC has to do all the work. All of the Hauppauge PVR models have hardware encoding, AFAIR. Models without hardware encoding will slow your PC down quite a bit, though if you have a powerful PC, you should be fine.

On a side note, I had a HTPC with a Celeron and 256 Mb of RAM using the PVR2 and it worked like a dream. The Celeron really only acted as a traffic director (i.e. taking the stream from the PVR and placing on the disk, or displaying on the screen).