TV Tuner card

Okay, I use a TV tuner card to watch Television and play my consoles. First things first though. I will tell you now that there are very few tuner cards that support HD signals just for television watching. Finding one with HD inputs is even harder. If you want HD that badly you're either going to have to use a PC monitor with Component/DVI/HDMI in or use a box of somesort to convert the signals.

Now, ignoring that bit of information it isn't that difficult to watch TV on your computer and use your console as well. It isn't that expensive either. Despite what people say there isn't that much signal lag when you use the proper hardware and software. Sometimes there's none at all or if there is it's so small it's not noticable at all. Believe me, I mainly play fast paced games. If there was any noticable lag I wouldn't be able to play them. Like fighters, for example.

Now, what card you should buy depends on the software you wish to use. I suggest using Dscaler. A de-interlacing program that de interlaces the interlaced signal you get over cable or devices like consoles. It has many de-interlacing options and picture filters as well. It can also record video if you wish so it has limited DVR functionality available too.

I can not suggest any better software for TV tuners and the likes. With it I get no lag at all when playing games. It's easy on even older hardware and can cover up alot of the flaws in the picture with its many filters. (Although at a cost of more CPU demand). You can even hide some of the ugly aliasing of consoles like the PS2.

This is where you can get ahold of Dscaler. http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/ You'll want to download Dscaler 4. If you need any help it has a good amount of documentation and a support community. Although the community can be slow sometimes.

As for hardware you'll need to take a look at http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/c...port/index.htm and find a card that Dscaler supports. You do not need to buy an expensive card. Even a cheapo card will do. Ofcourse, the more expensive card you purchase the more features you'll get.

Personally, I use a Winfast TV2000 which only set me back 30$. It has a NTSC tuner, Composite in, and S-video In.

I really, really suggest getting a card with S-video in. When you use a computer monitor of any sort it is of a much higher definition than your normal TV set. It will show every flaw of the signal. So using composite is going to be a bit ugly. Take advantage of S-video whenever you can.

As for the audio RCA cables you'll either have to get a TV tuner with those as well, get an RCA to mini jack adapter, or a soundcard with RCA inputs for audio. I've got an X-FI with a breakout box so I already had inputs for it. But an adapter should work fine for any PC.

Lastly, here's a picture of what it looks like when playing PS2 through Dscaler on my TV tuner.



If you need any suggestions for filters, settings, or de-interlacing methods you can just PM me. Or you can just take a quick search of the support forums on the Dscaler site. Which has many threads on using Dscaler for consoles.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

All TV tuners come with a coaxial connection. Otherwise they wouldn't be TV tuners. If all you want to do is watch TV then even the cheapest TV tuner will work. Which is normally your bare bones tuner card with coaxial input and nothing extra like composite/S-video in. I'd still go with Dscaler for TV watching too.

Like I said in my previous post, I suggest just taking a look at what cards Dscaler supports. Then pick the card that fits your budget. If you're really anal about quality you can buy tuners based on the chipset they use. But I really don't know too much about the difference between them. So you would have to check the Dscaler forums.

I'm not sure what you're asking in your second question. You have to pay for HD service (depends on your provider) to get HD channels (unless you're pulling them over the air) regardless if you have a HD tuner or not. But you will need a HD tuner to recieve the HD service. Since normal TV tuners cannot.

There's nowhere I can't reach.