Broadband TV

tall chapy

Check these out.

http://www.comfm.com/live/tv/

Prime

Some one posted earlier, something like "wow tv on your computer". A while back I was getting sick of missing Alias on a Monday, as I would usually be out and most people in my house like myself hate setting up the video recorder. So I went out and bought a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 (Personal Video Recorder).

It may only give you what ever channels you can pick up off your cable or rabbit ears but for me it has been one of my best purchases this year. It has dedicated hardware encoding into mpeg2 and avi so it doesn't steal all your CPU bandwidth and if I am tired browsing the net I just pick up my remote and start channel flicking. Really impressed, with it beats the hell out of killing your bandwith on the net just to watch TV, I say why not do both at the same time.

Just food for thought

Prime

Hobbes

Originally posted by andrew163
get a TV tuner card to get it without the broadband connection......although it might b easier to just get a television

And not easily save your favorite programs into DivX?!

Now if only there was software which could switch record on/off like a VCR and it would rock.

Prime

Now if only there was software which could switch record on/off like a VCR and it would rock.

There is !! or are you just taking the mick. For those of you that have been hiding under a really big rock for the last maybe two years now. A TV Card that supports or is a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) generally comes witht the software you need that allows you to set the time you want to record your programs at, just like a VCR.

Basically tied into the "AT" command in DOS under Windows or set-up as a cron job in UNIX. Eather way once I have my WinTV PVR setup I can get it to run at the same time each week and never worry about missing any of my programs and great thing is even if I switch off my computer and turn it back on. I don't loose all the time settings (god that really use to bug my on my VCR, grrrr and double grrrr again "who unpluged the bloody VCR, did you not see the great BIG note I left (postit 4" x 3") on the TV. Now look what has gone and happened :mad: ").

As Homer put it:

No TV and No beer makes Homer go something something...

Thats me when I miss something on TV and went out of my way to setup the VCR.

Well anyway, problem solved with a tv card that supports PVR, (yay also for Hardware MPEG2 encoding. :eek: Please software encoding software, spare my CPU it never did anything to harm anyone...)

PVRs Rock...

Autobots, Roll Out!

Hobbes

Nope my software doesn't have the feature.

What is the name of yours?

Prime

Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250, there is a 350 model which allows you to hook up cable radio to the card also and record directly from the radio in various formats. Didn't bother with this feature as my Creative Zen remote has this feature and the difference in price between the PVR 250 and 350 was around €100 and for one I am not a big fan of listening to commercials all day on the radio.

If you are looking at getting a PVR, stay clear of anything that is USB unless it supports USB2 or Firewire, the bandwidth on USB TV cards sucks big time for encoding in real time.

As encoding / recording takes place in on the card this doesn't disturb your over performance of your machine, which you see with regular DivX encoding etc... taking over your CPU.

The only down fall I can see of this card, is that there is a laps tiem of about 2 seconds on the signal comming in. So hooking up a games console is out of the question. On any other TV card that supports real streaming (i.e. not a PVR) this is not a problem. They should have some kind of feature to bypass the recording buffer.

Overall a great card, I can sit back record and watch TV at the same time and when I am out I can set the timer to record my programs. Plus browsing the net and watching TV at the same time, can't get better.

Hauppauge were talking about a new feature that will allowing you to record one chanell and flick between other channels at the same time. At the moment I think Pinacle our the only TV cards that support this feature.

chill

Originally posted by Ro
Here's a few channels streaming in Windows Media (480kb/s):

[URL=mms://dsltv.xs4all.nl/dsltv01]BBC World[/URL]
[URL=mms://dsltv.xs4all.nl/dsltv02]Deutsche Welle[/URL]
[URL=mms://dsltv.xs4all.nl/dsltv03]Iraq TV[/URL]
[URL=mms://dsltv.xs4all.nl/dsltv04]CCTV 9[/URL]
[URL=mms://dsltv.xs4all.nl/dsltv05]CNBC Europe[/URL]
[URL=mms://dsltv.xs4all.nl/dsltv06]Euronews[/URL]

I have the latest v9 Windows Media PLayer on my Win2k. But it says it cannot find any of these files. Any ideas anyone ?

tall chapy

Try these..

http://www.comfm.com/live/tv/

http://www.comfm.com/live/tv/

BrianD

I am sure the Iraqi's are delighted they can watch TV on Broadband given them that most of them can't even make a phone call. Though I suppose one of the advantages of having your telephone network extensively bombed is that the replacement sysytem is brand spanking new!

chill

Whenever I go to the BBC site for their tv feed I can only get dial up speeds.

The BBC said that they do not supply BB speed outside the uk.

How is it that some people can get it ?

gsand

just dlaod the new winamp-its got loads of channels-im watching the newish italian job as we speak

ando

yea that winamp is pretty good

cranoo

Originally posted by gsand
just dlaod the new winamp-its got loads of channels-im watching the newish italian job as we speak

Yep done that but the winamp Tv player just says connected retrieving list but no list turns up, whats the prob lads,ww)

Cranoo.........

gsand

go up and change the key to broadband as there are no 56k channels-i assume ur on bb and havnt it selected top right of the channel list