I put a ATI 1300 pro in my unit and hooked it to the DVI on my Samsung 940mw. The difference in piture while veiwing the OTA HDTV is unreal so very nice indeed. I was lucky enough to have a little skip and see KCPQ 18.1 DT and it has made getting a larger LCD with a ATSC tuner a sooner rather than later choice.

Hello, i'm new here, and I had a quick question. I have a bell expressvu 2700A receiver in my basement, next to my computer. I want to get a tv capture card so I can watch tv on my computer and record shows to my hard drive. The card I want has coaxial in and composite in. Will I be able to use these two together?

I have a 2700 in my rec room and my computer in my bedroom. What I do is hook up my tv to my satellite with the S-Video and then hook up the satellite with the coaxal to my computer. I'm not sure if you want both the tv and computer to have satellite signal or not, but if you do you should be ok.

Yeah, I would like them both to have satellite. Could I also use a coaxial splitter to take the signal from the receiver, split it, then have one go to my tv, and one go to my computer?

Satellite Receiver-->|Splitter| -> To Computer
-> To TV

yep, that will work

Okay, thanks for helping! :D

What you really want to do is to feed the computer and the TV with the S-Video and the yellow composite/video respectively, you can do either way but I would feed the S-Video to the computer TV card personally. These feeds better signal than the RF output. The RF output really meant to be for very old TV's that don't have any other input choices.

Okay, the only problem is that my computer is at the opposite end of the room from the satellite box, and right now the only cable that I have to reach is RF. If I did choose to use the S video to the computer, would I use the composite audio with it?

Yes, you would need to feed the audio as well

As it is, the RF cable is easiest, if you still get stereo sound, I guess it is not all bad :~)
S-Video cable is hard to extend, composites (yellow/red/white) can be extended fairly easily and cheaply.

RF doesn't send stereo audio, at least on a receiver as low end as a 2700. Just get a long audio cable and S-video cable. I RF on my system, and am fine with that. I could send stereo audio over the Cat5 wiring in my home, if I want to.

I use an older BT878 based Hauppauge WinTV-Go to watch TV on my PC (fully expanded on my second screen). I record with the TiVo though. A BT878 carde only captures, it relies on the PC to encode, if you want to record.

If I were in the market for a TV card today, I'd look for one that has PVR capability and S-video input, such as the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR series. Thse cards partially encode on the card, requiring less work for the PC.

This is what I do as well...using CAT5 ethernet cable and use the wire for Audio and Video, a lot of work putting on the ends but better quality.

There is another point for the OP, the STB should be close enough to the computer for the IR blaster wire to reach so you can use it to change channels

I am running Vista Ultimate (it has the media center).
My provider is Videotron and I subscribe to the HD feed.

I would like to watch TV on my PC for as little money as possible.
It would be nice to have the HD quality on my PC but don't care much for PVR capabilities (although, that too would be nice).

There is a WinTV card for 70$ at FS right now. It's the GO-Plus.
How is this card ? Is it compatible with Vista ? Is it worth it to shell out almost double for a higher end model ? I find the Hauppauge website to be quite stingy on information.

Another question that I always wondered is how can the digital channels be viewable on a PC if the cable is conencted directly on the WinTV card ? I always thought the signal HAD to go through a decoder in order to be viewed and that the only signal that could be viewed "directly" from the cable to the screen was analog...

Thanks for helping me with this. I was at the store a few hours ago and was overwhelmed by the different products that all looked the same to me at first glance. As you can imagine, the salespeople were not very helpful when it came to that kind of stuff.

Thanks

MC

The card by itself won't do the job ... Unless you only want to look at 'classic' cable. The problem with Videotron is that they encrypt the digital signal thus the need to go through the setup box.

What you would need is an IR blaster and a video card. The IR blaster will act as a remote and change the channels on the setup box. But if someone else is using the setup box, your screwed, you need also another setup box to hook it up, you can't "split" they out signal from the setup box.

Patrick S.

Hi, I want a NTSC & ATSC TV Capture card for my new Vista PC.

Here are two I can found, which one is better ? Or if u have any other good suggestion, please let me know ?

Thanks very much !

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_hvr1600.html
http://www.geardigest.com/2007/07/05/avermedia_combo_tv_card_brings_analog_and_digital_together/page7.html

Sounds like quite a pain in the butt... not to mention pricey...

I bought the WinTV Go PLus today to try and figured I could bring it back within 30 days.

It's working fine on Vista but it's obviously analog. It's not like watching the Plasma but all I wanted it for is because I have 2 screens and wanted to work on one screen and watch TV on the other.

Dream come true :) and for only 70 bucks.. I wish all my dreams were that cheap...

Chaotik

I haven't personally tested either card, but expect an Avermedia in the mail this week to give it a test. If you can wait until next weekend, I can probably give you a first-hand review.

Without seeing them, here is my advice to you:
- the Hauppauge is PCI, the Avermedia PCIe (at least the links you provided were anyways). Make sure you know the expansion slot type(s) that you have available.
- it's unclear to me from the descriptions that this can be used as a dual tuner. The Hauppauge marketing implies that you can use both tuners at once under MCE, but they stop short of actually saying you can do so using only one of their tuner cards.
- both have hardware encoding, which was not the case for earlier hybrid cards (ie they both look good on paper to me)
- both have been in the MCE business for a long time, Hauppauge gets the upper hand for longevity and driver support though

So, to sum it up - both look good but I still want to test a couple things before I'd personally vouch for either.

Pete

Just got confirmation from Avermedia - the hybrid cards can use both tuners at the same time.

hi, pnear, tks for above information.

How well does the PCI-E Avermedia card work under Vista ? Is the remote control Media Center compitable?

Waiting for your updates.. :-)

Cards are in transit, but not yet in my mailbox unfortunately. :-(