HDTV tuner card

[madcratebuilder]

My internet cable provider sent me a set top TV box and said I can use it to watch basic cable on my PC at no additional charge. Nothing is ever free, I need a way of connecting to the PC. I've looked at the TV tuner cards and my head is spinning. From $10 usb sticks to $150+ pci cards. I'm not sure I want to install another pci card, it's already crowded inside my PC.

I would like to hear suggestions from those who have these devices. This well be for watching in my office while I'm using the PC. I already have a home theater with 65" 3d, surround, SAT, on demand to watch reruns of Gunsmoke.

Are these cheap usb tuner sticks worth the time and effort to mess with?

 

[Mark Phelps]

Your best bet is seeing if your cable provider has a website where they provide instructions for connecting the box to a PC. I've used two different cable providers, and both providers had such instructions on their websites. In both cases, it required having a video card on the PC that would accept input through a coax cable.

Realize though, that "basic cable" is likely to be little more than the standard major media network channels and some weather channels. All the movies and HD channels will be beyond "basic cable".

 

[essenbe]

I agree with contacting your cable provider. I have a Hauppage 2250 Tv Tuner card and DirectTV. It is a Digital dual Tuner card. The problem is, and I didn't know, is my signal is analog. I could pick up QAM channels with no problem with an antannae, but I had to set the digital tuner as analog to pick up Direct TV. The picture was pretty bad, but it worked and was very good at recording shows. With a dual receiver you can watch 1 chanel and rcord another at the same time. The picture quality was not good enough, so I have removed it. But, all that was required was to connect the coax from the set top box to the TV Tuner. Media Center picked it up right away. Another tip is the drivers add about 20 seconds to the start up time, which didn't bother me. But Media Center requires an IR Remote, which I didn't have. There are ways around it, but it took about an hour of Googling to find them. Your cable provider can tell you exactly what you need and avoid the problems I had.

 

[madcratebuilder]

Thanks for the input guys. This tuner doesn't need to do much more than interface with my PC. I have DirectTV SAT with wifi on demand for my entertainment system. I just want to have a small window on screen to watch the news while I'm on the computer.

I found this ATI Theater HD 750 USB stick on sale, it has very glowing reviews. Appears to be what I'm looking for. If not I'm only out $25.