What TV tuner card will work with Dish Network?

tankman1989

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I've been doing research on what TV tuner cards will work with Dish Network or even Direct TV and I've been getting conflicting stories. I'd like to be able to watch HD on my computer if that is possible.

Has anyone here successfully gotten HD on their computer from Satellite? I've heard that there is something different from it compared to cable and cable cards.
 
I've been doing research on what TV tuner cards will work with Dish Network or even Direct TV and I've been getting conflicting stories. I'd like to be able to watch HD on my computer if that is possible.

Has anyone here successfully gotten HD on their computer from Satellite? I've heard that there is something different from it compared to cable and cable cards.

I am pretty rusty on this subject but the only thing I could think you are referring to is the built in tuner in the card itself. Any HD TV card can be hooked into dish network / direct tv if you have it going to a receiver box first then whatever tv out method (hdmi for example) to the tv tuner card. Now like I said im rusty on the subject so if theres actually an HD tv card that allows you to actually change channels using the tv tuner card itself with satellite then its something released within the last few years.
 
It depends on what you are looking to do. If you are just looking to watch Dish or Direct on your pc, going through the sat provider's receiver (set top box), almost any card with an hdmi port will work. A capture card will allow you to capture/pause the video. Last I checked these were under $50 or so. One thing to know about going this way, however, is that the "TV2" output on most receivers is not HDTV. Most TV2 outputs are set to about 480p, so not HDTV.

You might also want to look at getting a slingbox.
 
If you are trying to use a set top satellite receiver with an HDMI port. I suggest this card.
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_colossus.html

Most TV Tuners with HDMI are pretty expensive. A regular QAM/ATSC tuner can be inexpensive, but you will find a lot of problems with the ones that use software to process video and not hardware.

For TV Tuners I stick with Hauppauge....always. AVERMedia is alright, but Happauge is the best consumer brand in my opinion.

WIth that said a Slingbox is probably the BEST option for what you want to do. Have a look at the Slingbox 350 with Ethernet. WIth that you would be able to watch HDTV on most devices on the network. I am not 100% on if it is 1080 or not though. I can imagine true HD over a wireless connection working all that great.
 
My post may go a bit beyond what you are looking for but might be food for thought. I have a computer dedicated to running mythtv and 2 Hauppauge pvr-150's for recording off of 2 SD quality Directv boxes. It works ok but the cards are getting quite old and Im looking into replacing them with a HD option instead. So, Im kinda in the same boat as you.

Iam investigating the HD-PVR as a solution to my needs. Im not ready to pull the trigger on one yet but getting there. Here is a link to it and you might consider it also.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

My problem will be that I have to swap out my 2 SD quality boxes for HD quality with DirecTV.

coffee
 
The RF out port on any Dish or DirectV box DOES NOT put out any type of HD signal.

The only way you can watch HD on them is through the HDMI connector.

It's all part of the copy protection scheme to protect digital content from being recorded.

If your trying to just replace the satellite box with a card for your computer. I personally have never seen one or even heard of one. I would be surprise if they would be allowed to even make one because of how easy it would be for someone to write a program to copy the digital content.
 
The RF out port on any Dish or DirectV box DOES NOT put out any type of HD signal.

The only way you can watch HD on them is through the HDMI connector.

It's all part of the copy protection scheme to protect digital content from being recorded.

If your trying to just replace the satellite box with a card for your computer. I personally have never seen one or even heard of one. I would be surprise if they would be allowed to even make one because of how easy it would be for someone to write a program to copy the digital content.
This is why I suggested the card I did and the sling box. Both have HDMI inputs for the satellite box.
 
correct about hdmi being only hd way to view as apposed to tv2 out. The component should work too but don't know if you can hook up hdmi and component at same time. The reason tv2 out doesn't do hd on dual tuner receivers is because tv2 only supports frequencies 5-850 and doesn't support hd freqs 950-2150.
 
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