TV Tuners

robinph

I'm thinking of getting myself a USB TV tuner but all I'm able to find on ebay is ones calling themselves digtal/ freeview tuners. Now one that would pickup freeview might be handy for when visiting the UK but would they still be likely to work on the analogue signals that we get over here as none of them seem to mention anything about that in the blurb.

Ponster

I use this one :

http://www.adstech.com/products/PTV-339-EFS/intro/PTV-339_intro.asp?pid=PTV-339-EFS

which picks up Freeview as well as normal TV signals though I don't know if it's available in Ireland.

zilog_jones

There's some on Komplett: http://www.komplett.ie/k/kl.asp?bn=10420

Generally if they only list "digital" or DVB-T/S/C in the descriptions without explicitly also saying "analogue" or "PAL", they won't work with analogue TV at all. Also avoid buying anything from North America - they generally don't use the same aerial connectors as over here, and may not even support PAL which would make them completely useless in Europe.

padraig_f

Most are one or the other, if it doesn't specify analogue it probably won't support it. There's a useful feature list of Hauppauge cards here: http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/compare_products.html

snappieT

This one from Argos is the market standard, and it's on sale at the mo, and you can pick it up whenever from Argos, you won't have to wait.

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6767543.htm

28064212

What's the antenna-only reception like on one of those?

robinph

snappieT wrote:

This one from Argos is the market standard, and it's on sale at the mo, and you can pick it up whenever from Argos, you won't have to wait.

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6767543.htm

Does that one have a connection for an external antenna or is it just all built in?

padraig_f

snappieT wrote:

This one from Argos is the market standard, and it's on sale at the mo, and you can pick it up whenever from Argos, you won't have to wait.

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6767543.htm

Note that that's a USB1 tuner. I've not used them myself but I've heard the picture quality isn't great as it uses lossy compression to send it through the USB1 interface. There are USB2 versions available:

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_usb2.html
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_hvr900.html

Tom Dunne

28064212 wrote:

What's the antenna-only reception like on one of those?

Rubbish, bordering on unwatchable.

I have the Hauppauge USB2 PVR and I can't really get good reception, even with a signal booster.