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  • TV Tuner

    I didn't want to hijack Pace's thread so I am starting a new one.

    So I've been looking at TV tuners. I finally found one that appealed to me. Little did I know it would do a lot more for me than I imagined.

    I just wanted QAM. I wasn't even sure if Comcast actually sent QAM broadcasts down the cable line. I looked around the web but everyone said that some parts of the Bay Area have QAM but it could be filtered out elsewhere.

    So I hook it up and sure enough, Comcast is sending unencrypted QAM broadcasts and music. I was worried it wouldn't work because I am using the same cable line that is connected to my cable modem so I thought they may filter on that line. Well, this TV tuner I bought has two cable inputs, analog and digital. I thought, I wonder if I could hook up both as well as internet.

    In other words, I wanted to split my cable line three ways. One to the cable modem and two to my tv tuner on each of the analog and digital inputs. So I go to Radio Shack, BS with the sales guy about it for 10 minutes and come home with the needed parts. I hook it all up and wouldn't you know it, it all works! This TV tuner is kick ass! It also supports s-video and RCA in for capture. It also comes with an MCE remote and a few other odds and ends. All for $120.

    To add to this, I actually called up the company to ask them a few questions. The guy I talked to helped me out big time. I also asked where I might be able to pick it up locally. He said, that if I bought it online, I could drop by the company and pick it up, so I did.

    So anyway, I sound like an infomercial now that I look at my post, but wanted to share my joy Oh! and 64-bit vista drivers out of the box!

    Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

  • #2
    Here's a screen shot of my desktop running two media centers plus internet. One MC(Windows MCE) has the analog signal and the second MC(The one that comes with the TV tuner) running QAM. This is all run at the same time! Fun stuff!

    For some reason, the HD signal doesn't show up in the screen shot. Bug of the Vista snipping tool or something else?


    Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

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    • #3
      Probably one video stream is using overlay (usually simply the first one beeing turned on...also while SD stream might work without overlay fluently, HD one could have problems...) and you can't make screenshot of that...

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      • #4
        No HDTV here, but DVB-T (which sends medium quality MPEG streams over the air, so no reencoding etc. is required for recording):



        4 recorded movies and one live TV stream, on a notebook with integrated graphics (Top right, next to the clock, the two rightmost blue bars show CPU usage at about 50% for both cores)

        The Elgato eyeTV Software is really, really nice, and cutting movies is so easy my mother could do it (and she thinks her computer has to stay connected to the internet so she doesn't miss any e-mail!).
        There's an Opera in my macbook.

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        • #5
          What's DVB-T? The screen shots look good!
          Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

          Comment


          • #6
            Basically it's digital TV standard which will be used in Europe (and few other places too I guess...)


            DVB-T is a variant meant for broadcast by terrestial stations.

            Sometimes I think about getting DVB tuner, but apparently Poland will use MPEG4 based variant, and there aren't any affordable PC tuners for it yet... (there is MPEG2 DVB-T test broadcast in my area...but the card would be obsolete in few years and currently I won't get any more channels than I'm getting on analogue...with quite good quality thanks to Dscaler and tvtime)
            Last edited by Nowhere; 15 September 2007, 12:14.

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            • #7
              Your picture looks NTSC (analog), Helevitia. Or more likely your broadcaster simply upsampled the 480i signal to their broadcast standard and did a piss poor job of it.

              I can't wait for everything to be filmed in 720p or 1080i.
              “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
              –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Jammrock View Post
                Your picture looks NTSC (analog), Helevitia. Or more likely your broadcaster simply upsampled the 480i signal to their broadcast standard and did a piss poor job of it.

                I can't wait for everything to be filmed in 720p or 1080i.

                It is NTSC in analog. You can't see the HD picture because for some reason the screenshot didn't capture it.
                Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

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