Hi All, Can you help me find a TV tuner

[luck_dragon66]

Not to long ago I got myself a new shuttle for gaming, nothing to hot but it does, also picked myself up a 24" monitor to go with it. Now I have just been sitting here thinking that it is bigger than my TV and that I should get a TV tuner or something so that I can watch TV on it and record it to my PC etc etc.

The question is where do I begin, has anyone got something that works well for them and does anyone know what I should be looking for to get something that's going top work for me?

Here is some points I need to bare in mind?

- Needs to be USB (no free slots in my shuttle)
- Needs to receive free view
- Like to be able to plug the old sky box into it.
- And finally I would like something that was HDTV ready so I will not need to go out and replace it any time soon.

On that last note, is it possible to watch HDTV on a PC and Monitor? Is anyone doing it already? What specs PC, graphics card, etc would I need?

From what I understand it is just a TV signal at a higher screen Rez (but hay I will be the first to admit I don't know much about it and could be completely wrong)

Any advice or info anyone could give would be appreciated greatly.

Luck_dragon66

[directhex]

Originally Posted by luck_dragon66

Not to long ago I got myself a new shuttle for gaming, nothing to hot but it does, also picked myself up a 24" monitor to go with it. Now I have just been sitting here thinking that it is bigger than my TV and that I should get a TV tuner or something so that I can watch TV on it and record it to my PC etc etc.

The question is where do I begin, has anyone got something that works well for them and does anyone know what I should be looking for to get something that's going top work for me?

Here is some points I need to bare in mind?

- Needs to be USB (no free slots in my shuttle)

there are a lot of USB tuners. take your pick, really.

- Needs to receive free view

there are a lot of USB freeview tuners, too.

- Like to be able to plug the old sky box into it.

how does the "old" sky box connect?

- And finally I would like something that was HDTV ready so I will not need to go out and replace it any time soon.

that could be tricky. any freeview tuner device is capable of obtaining HD freeview (as long as you're on the Crystal Palace transmitter) - but you may find that the OS is a blocker, as new drivers and codecs are required (and you can bet your bottom dollar that the hardware manufacturers will artifically prevent "soft" upgrades to their windows drivers & software)

On that last note, is it possible to watch HDTV on a PC and Monitor? Is anyone doing it already? What specs PC, graphics card, etc would I need?

a FAST processor, or a graphics card with accelerated mpeg2 and h.264 playback. HD trailers on apple.com/movies are h.264 - so try playing those back, to see how you'll cope

From what I understand it is just a TV signal at a higher screen Rez (but hay I will be the first to admit I don't know much about it and could be completely wrong)

largely - but as i've said, it uses a different codec too - one that's more CPU-intensive.

[luck_dragon66]

Thanks for the info