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Thread: What USB Freeview tuner thingie....

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    What USB Freeview tuner thingie....

    hey guys n gals,

    what with some form of football tournament on soon, ive been thinking of getting a USB Freeview tuner for my laptop.
    i want it to have its own arial, and a remote if poss

    any models that can be recommended??

    thanking you in advance
    The Karl Pilkington of Hexus

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    I've got the MSI Megasky 580 and it's great, comes with a remote and is Media Centre compliant. The aerial that comes with all of these USB tuners are absolutely useless unless you're in a very strong signal area. I live about 10 miles from my local transmitter and can only pick up about a quarter of the channels but even they continually break up. Connected to my roof aerial though it's rock solid.

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    Thanks for responding so quickly

    Quote Originally Posted by killie99
    Connected to my roof aerial though it's rock solid.
    an excellent plan with only 2 tiny drawbacks...

    A) my workplace doesnt have an external arial
    and
    B) my workplace doesnt have an external arial

    hence why i would like an arial to be included.
    The Karl Pilkington of Hexus

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    Yep, you really need an external ariel to make the most of these things.
    I've got the Leadtek Winfast DTV one - great piece of hardware for recording from a good ariel, but the software can be a bit buggy at times. However, I'm currently using it with a below-spec cpu (XP1700+), and they do use up quite a lot of processor power to encode, so, that might be causing the odd problem that I've had, and not the software.
    Haven't tried the rubber-sucker supplied ariel, so can't comment on that one.
    Recording quality from an external ariel is superb, however.
    The Leadtek one has a good software bundle - lite versions of Ulead Videostudio 9/DVD Movie Factory 4/Cool 3D/Muvee 3/PowerDVD.

    S.

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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by digitalis
    Yep, you really need an external ariel to make the most of these things.
    I've got the Leadtek Winfast DTV one - great piece of hardware for recording from a good ariel, but the software can be a bit buggy at times. However, I'm currently using it with a below-spec cpu (XP1700+), and they do use up quite a lot of processor power to encode, so, that might be causing the odd problem that I've had, and not the software.
    sorry, but that's just wrong.

    DVB-T transmits MPEG2 streams directly. the CPU required is negligable - you just need to either dump to disk, or display the image (which should be fine on any DVD-capable PC)

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    Not Very Senior Member RavenNight's Avatar
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    Well my TV card (when it works) certianly pounds the CPU when its recording.
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    thanks for all the help

    i'm gonna go for the MSI jobbie... its less than £30 so i cant go wrong really (i hope)
    The Karl Pilkington of Hexus

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    A friend of mine had the same problem with not having a fixed aerial at his work - he tried wiring it to his metal filing cabinet and it worked fine YMMV!
    I see, said the blind man to his deaf wife as he stuck his wooden leg out of the door to feel if it was raining.

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    funny you should say that...

    the outside of our building is metal, and the msi ariel has a magnet on it...

    just shoved it as high as we could - got a load of channels
    The Karl Pilkington of Hexus

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    Quote Originally Posted by RavenNight
    Well my TV card (when it works) certianly pounds the CPU when its recording.
    then it's probably transcoding as it records - which is pointless, since the input signal is already a reasonable mpeg2 image.

    recording two input signals at once, my mythtv box uses about 5% cpu maximum - but hammers the disk.

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