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Thread: TV cards

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    TV cards

    I have a budget of arund £30 for an internal TV card.

    I basically want to be able to watch all the normal digital channels as well as record TV programs.

    Can anyone shed any light on this topic?

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    Re: TV cards

    Hauppage WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual tuner. Slightly more at 40 - 50 but it is well well well worth the extra expense.

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    Re: TV cards

    Quote Originally Posted by tomawest View Post
    Hauppage WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual tuner. Slightly more at 40 - 50 but it is well well well worth the extra expense.
    In what way?

    I don't mind paying a spot oevr my budget if I can justify it

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    Re: TV cards

    I got a Pinnacle 3010IX dual DVB-T card from ebay for £15, Play.com have it for £17.99

    http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/669/876...archtype=genre

    Used it to replace one of my Blackgold TV cards, no problems with it

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    Re: TV cards

    Quote Originally Posted by torsionSW View Post
    I got a Pinnacle 3010IX dual DVB-T card from ebay for £15, Play.com have it for £17.99

    http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/669/876...archtype=genre

    Used it to replace one of my Blackgold TV cards, no problems with it
    That card does look very nice indeed... and it's less than £20!

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    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Re: TV cards

    and if you want some decent media center software, have a look at http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

    Fast approaching a v1.0 release and getting very good these days,.

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    Re: TV cards

    I use a Nova-T with media portal on my HTPC's
    http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=9833
    The quality of the picture depends on your location and arial rember a pc is a good place for a tv signal
    Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

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    Re: TV cards

    Quote Originally Posted by tomawest View Post
    Hauppage WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual tuner. Slightly more at 40 - 50 but it is well well well worth the extra expense.
    I third the Hauppage as I get good results with it on my media centre pc. The drivers are solid on both 32/64bit vista and the reception is reliable, be wary of very cheap cards as many will need strong signals to work properly and suffer more from electrical interference. Best to traul the net for user reviews to get a general idea of quality, avforums often has a lot of good info.

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    Re: TV cards

    If Lee (Scan Moderator) sees this post tomorrow - I'm sure he can give you some good input on TV Cards

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    Re: TV cards

    Quote Originally Posted by torsionSW View Post
    I got a Pinnacle 3010IX dual DVB-T card from ebay for £15, Play.com have it for £17.99

    http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/-/669/876...archtype=genre

    Used it to replace one of my Blackgold TV cards, no problems with it
    Quote Originally Posted by s3ds View Post
    I use a Nova-T with media portal on my HTPC's
    http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=9833
    The quality of the picture depends on your location and arial rember a pc is a good place for a tv signal

    These two are the most promising so far; I'll wait for Lee's input

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    Re: TV cards

    To be honest I'm just going to reiterate what most have said.

    I've used a few tv cards in my PC for testing and whatnot and found that even though I had a few teething issues to start, the hauppauge series of nova T cards - single and dual (I have both!) are very good.

    As long as you use an external antenna there shouldn't be an issue, but many people are now awaiting the freesat hardware as this gives more access to free HD stuff and not only that there are a lot of channels

    I've not used mediaportal, but I have used windows MCE 2005, vista and vista 64 for playing and had no issues.

    The benefit of the dual tuner card is worth the additional as you can watch one channel while recording another, or at those times when the BBC and ITV put things on to clash you can record both if required.

    It was this inane recording I kept doing which made me keep getting more and more hard-drives to fill up.

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    Re: TV cards

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee @ SCAN View Post
    To be honest I'm just going to reiterate what most have said.

    I've used a few tv cards in my PC for testing and whatnot and found that even though I had a few teething issues to start, the hauppauge series of nova T cards - single and dual (I have both!) are very good.

    As long as you use an external antenna there shouldn't be an issue, but many people are now awaiting the freesat hardware as this gives more access to free HD stuff and not only that there are a lot of channels

    I've not used mediaportal, but I have used windows MCE 2005, vista and vista 64 for playing and had no issues.

    The benefit of the dual tuner card is worth the additional as you can watch one channel while recording another, or at those times when the BBC and ITV put things on to clash you can record both if required.

    It was this inane recording I kept doing which made me keep getting more and more hard-drives to fill up.
    Is an antenna a necessity? Does it not have an inbuilt receiver? I live in my bedroom upstair and the only socket for an aerial is downstairs :S I've checked my covrage on DigitalUK.co.uk and have coverage, supposedly from the crystal palace transmitter, which is, give or take, 6km from me.

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    Re: TV cards

    You will need some sort of aerial, depending on how strong the signal is will determine if you need a large external one or a smaller internal.

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    Re: TV cards

    Quote Originally Posted by Englander View Post
    Is an antenna a necessity? Does it not have an inbuilt receiver?
    Yes to both.

    Any TV card will have a tuner built in (thats what makes it a TV card) but you need to get the signal to it, just like if you put a normal TV in that location.


    Quote Originally Posted by Lee @ SCAN View Post
    The benefit of the dual tuner card is worth the additional as you can watch one channel while recording another, or at those times when the BBC and ITV put things on to clash you can record both if required.
    This can be done to a limited extent with one tuner using decent software

    Groups of digital TV channels are bundled together and broadcast in the same radio frequency space as a regular analogue TV station, this is known as a Multiplex (or Mux). A tuner can only tune to a single Mux at a time, however, it send that whole bundle of channels and data to the recieving software at once. Apps like MediaPortal can handle all the channels in the Mux and deal with them indipendantly. So some channels, for example BBC1 and BBC2 can both be recorded or viewed at the same time using only one tuner.

    With dual tuners you can cover roughly a third of the channels available on Freeview and have everything in those two Mux's available to watch or record at the same time.

    There are 6 Mux's in total, so in theory, with three Nova-T 500s (and enough disk space) you could record everything broadcast on Freeview 24 hours a day

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    Re: TV cards

    Ah, I see.

    Also, the Nova-T card is currently out of stock, anyone got any idea when it'll be back?

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    Re: TV cards

    What is the LN ref of the Nova-T card?

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