Add tv card to pc

cintec

Hi,

I have a cusom built pc and Just curious if I add a tv card to my pc will I be able to receive tv channels I have upc tv and broadband but would like to remove the tv as I only watch basic channels (RTE, BBC etc).

Do I need to have a satellite dish in order for it to work?

mad turnip

What kind of TV card are you thinking on getting?

If your going for satellite your thinking of 28.2E which is the sky satellite dish. This would require a DVB-S (or S2 for HD) PCI Tuner card, theres lots of software to get this working easily enough. On the other hand these cards cost between 50-100e depending if you want the HD or not. (But this will only give you the free view channels which theres about 100 of unless you install some kind of cam software)

If you just want the Irish stuff that just went digital lately. Your looking for a USB DVB-T tuner, these are very cheap maybe like 10er and there's a few good software packages to get it to work.

The TV your getting through UPC won't be easy to get working on a PC unless you know what your doing and using some kind of a cam to read the card and decrypt the channel. I'd recomend the DVB-T tuner as it seems to be what your looking for.

cintec

mad turnip wrote: »

What kind of TV card are you thinking on getting?

I couldn't answer this to be honest there are alot of card and I don't know how to choose between them I want to receive the irish channels and channels from the UK.

I'd like to receive freesat and saorview is this possible without a satellite dish?

mad turnip

Only the irish channels are possible without a satellite dish unless you want to stream over the internet using like BBC iPlayer and stuff.

If you get a TV card like this:
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/DVB-S-Satellite-TV-Tuner-Video-Capture-PCI-Card-Remote-DZ88-/400330903512?pt=UK_Computing_Video_Capture_TV_Tuner_Cards&hash=item5d3594cfd8

the input will be a satellite feed and you'll get many more channels, you can then expand this to full sky at a later stage if you want using a cam module.

Johnboy1951

If you want to record from Satellite while watching another Satellite channel then you will need two SAT tuners or a dual tuner card.

TBS do some very good quality cards ....

http://www.tbsdtv.com/products/tbs6981-dvb-s2-dual-tuner-pcie-card.html

but they are costly

@mad turnip

Do you have any experience with the tuner card you linked to?

If you get a TV card like this:
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/DVB-S-Satelli...item5d3594cfd8

It seems a very good price when compared to other such cards .....

mad turnip

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

If you want to record from Satellite while watching another Satellite channel then you will need two SAT tuners or a dual tuner card.

TBS do some very good quality cards ....

http://www.tbsdtv.com/products/tbs6981-dvb-s2-dual-tuner-pcie-card.html

but they are costly

@mad turnip

Do you have any experience with the tuner card you linked to?


It seems a very good price when compared to other such cards .....

No I don't have any experience with that card but as with most electronics out now a days half are from china hence the cheaper price if you want top quality you want to find a europeen manufacturer.

The one you linked two is also a DVB-S2 card which is used for HD channels they tend to be a lot more especially when they are twin tuners i'm quite surprised at the price there listing!

Johnboy1951

Does this card do hardware decoding or is the stream passed on the the OS for software decoding?


The cheaper DTT tuners do not decode .... passing the stream on the the OS to do software decoding.

Cards that have hardware decoders are much dearer.