Choosing TV Tuner card

[think4ever]

Hi,i planned to buy a TV Tuner card,I am using a CRT monitor.I dont know which type of type of tv tuner is efficient(internal or external)..Is it possible to store programs in external tv tuner card..give your suggestions..:o

[iptech]

I use Hauppauge TV cards in my Media Center and I find them very reliable. You cannot save recorded programs in the card itself, but you can save them onto a hard-disc for later playback/editing. You can buy internal PCi cards to fit inside the computer although the external USB adapters can also work very well and can be used with laptops. Most TV cards come with basic recording functionality or you can buy cards with recording software in what are called PVR packages, but you'll get better results if you use a standard card with dedicated media packages. An excellent choice for Media Center software is surprisingly Vista (Premium or Ultimate) which is what I use on my Home Theatre PC (HTPC), but an excellent free, Open Source alternative is MediaPortal (http://www.team-mediaportal.com/) which will run happily on 32 bit XP SP2 and above, it can appear a little daunting at first, but makes an excellent and stable HTPC platform. If you want to build a dedicated HTPC at minimal cost then consider MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org) on a Linux platform.

Oh, whatever you decide, make sure the TV card you buy is compatible with your local TV standard i.e. NTSC or PAL, analogue or digital, cable or antenna/aerial connection.

I've only touched upon the basics here, for more in-depth information have a look at Build Your Own PVR (http://www.byopvr.com/) for loads more stuff.

Have fun!

[rurbaniak]

Hauppauge cards are all good. You can get multi tuner cards to record more than one show at once, just like DVR's. And you can run multiple cards as well.

I run a Hauppauge PVR-150 dual tuner, and a Over the Air HDTV tuner, and use Beyond TV (http://www.snapstream.com) to record and save shows for later. I've been using them for years, great product. There's limited support right now for HD recording thats not Over the Air, so keep that in mind, thats with all products not just Beyond TV.

[think4ever]

k thank you!!!