Newbie question - tv tuner cards

ozz

I only have the poverty channels (rte1,rte2,tv3 and tg4) and have no interest in getting anything else.

this could be a stupid question but can i get a tv tuner card to work with these? i.e. view epg, record programmes?

any setups i have read on this forum seem to all use some form of digibox, is a digital signal a neccessity for a htpc setup?

layke

Yep, you can buy a WinTV card or something to the equiv.

Costs roughly €50 for a cheap one.

subway

make sure it is compatible with the htpc program youll be using.
ie not many work with mce

ozz

so that means i can get epg information for conventional analog tv? great, cheers.
will probably get mce so thanks for the tip subway.

subway

windows mce is a full blown interface for windows.
you control it with a remote and you can use the epg for normal abnlog telly,
even if its just the "poverty channles"

its a bit expensive tho, and ike i said above, not all tv cards work with it.

there are plenty of free alternatives to mce that you should try before buying the full ms product.

ive tried some of the free ones and imo they dont work as well as mce, they may have more features etc,
but in terms of "just working" mce is unbeatable i think.

thats importanat for me as mce is set up in the front room as our main tv source so cant have me poking around ar it half the time

however that may not be as important to you.

ozz

mce sounds like the job for me so as i plan on building a pc from scratch so will have to buy some operating system anyway.

Also going to be my main tv source in front room.

will just have to be careful when choosing the tv card.

thanks for the help.

Tom Dunne

ozz wrote:

I only have the poverty channels (rte1,rte2,tv3 and tg4) and have no interest in getting anything else.

this could be a stupid question but can i get a tv tuner card to work with these? i.e. view epg, record programmes?

Yes, but I find that the picture quality can be quite poor. I have RTE tuned in on the main tv perfectly using rabbits ears, but can't get a decent picture on RTE on the TV card, even though I am using a rabbits ears with a booster. The picture for all four channels is unwatchable.

As for the EPG/recording/etc - yes, I have used both Media Portal and GB-PVR and have got them to update their repsective EPGs via xmltv with the Irish channels. Not that I could watch the subsequent recording, though

ozz

thanks tom. well that has thrown a bit of a spanner in the works.

has anyone out there managed to have more success than tom with picture quality?

btw, what tv card are you using tom so that i can avoid same?

8T8

I dont know for certain about the hauppauge WinTV cards but the NVIDIA & ATI TV tuners have some noise reduction and image quality filters that they apply to the signal whether it would make any difference I couldn't say it may be one of those things you just have to try out.

Tom Dunne

ozz wrote:

btw, what tv card are you using tom so that i can avoid same?

It's a Hauppauge USB PVR2.

ethernet

tom dunne wrote:

It's a Hauppauge USB PVR2.

I have the same model. The software is a joke. Had to fine tune everything except the output from the digibox in the living room. And, when doing this, the main screen went totally black. I was relying on the audio status to change from mono to stereo.

Also, can't record radio. Got an awful shock of the adaptor that came with it a few nights ago. Surely that shouldn't happen. The teletext software that comes with it had "b" in the version, probably beta.

That's my rant over with. Any suggestion of any other decent software without completely going down the MCE route?