TV Tuner Card Advice and general advice

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lebowski

15 posts

Geek

#15712 4-Sep-2007 15:55

I am wanting to buy a tv tuner card for my PC. I am moving into a new house which is wired with Cat 5e throughout. What I thought I could do is have my pc upstairs (with tuner card) and downstairs have an XBox 360 used as a media extender connected to my tv via HDMI. With both these devices connected to the network I am assuming I could watch tv and record tv straight to my pc through media centre and playback on my tele? If so, what TV tuner card would you suggest? Is it worth getting a digital tuner card? Also if I wanted to invest in a freeview box would I connect it between the upsatirs tv point and the pc so I could watch and record freeview straight to the pc???

Thanks

Regs

4066 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Snowflake

#85321 4-Sep-2007 16:38

Do you have SKY satellite?
- you will want an analog tuner and "IR Blaster" if you want to hook the sky box to MCE. Suggest Hauppauge PVR500. If you are using a different media center app you may wish to get a Digital DVBS tuner instead (e.g. Hauppuage Nova-S which has one analog line in)

Do you have SKY UHF?
- you will want an analog tuner and "IR Blaster" if you want to hook the sky box to MCE. Suggest Hauppauge PVR500.

If you have no SKYbut have a Satellite dish already installed?
- you have the option or either Analog (Hauppauge PVR500) or DVBS (Hauppuage Nova-S) (or both if using non MCE media center)

You can use the XBox as a media extender for MCE (i'm unsure of support for other media centers) to watch live and recorded TV - glossy details here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/mediacenter/xbox360.mspx

Note: there are other brands of tuner cards available - i've only used hauppauge.

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mcraenz

1140 posts

Uber Geek

#85323 4-Sep-2007 16:48

If you're going to use DVB-S (Freeview) then I can recommend the technisat skystar2. I've not used it with MCE as I use MediaPortal TV server which is in my opinion much more powerful. check it out. :)

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itey

476 posts

Ultimate Geek

#85332 4-Sep-2007 17:43

mcraenz: If you're going to use DVB-S (Freeview) then I can recommend the technisat skystar2. I've not used it with MCE as I use MediaPortal TV server which is in my opinion much more powerful. check it out. :)

a note: if you are using an nforce 4 motherboard, then don't get a skystar 2. They may destroy your mobo

rich110

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#85403 5-Sep-2007 09:14

itey:
mcraenz: If you're going to use DVB-S (Freeview) then I can recommend the technisat skystar2. I've not used it with MCE as I use MediaPortal TV server which is in my opinion much more powerful. check it out. :)

a note: if you are using an nforce 4 motherboard, then don't get a skystar 2. They may destroy your mobo

can you explain this a little further pls? thx

itey

476 posts

Ultimate Geek

#85411 5-Sep-2007 10:10

see http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=282908

specifically

"Having installed my new Skystar 2 DVB-S card on my Asus A8N-SLI board and experiencing PC lock-up problems, I've now seen this in the Skystar FAQ manual:

<quote
Question: Are there any known compatibility issues in combination with main
boards, which are based on the nVidia nForce 4 chipset?
Answer: Currently we know, that our PCI cards are not compatible to most
main boards, which are based on the nVidia nForce4 chipset.
>"