Was hoping someone might have experience with using a tv tuner card into a PC.

I'm going to have digital cable but wanted to know if I could use my spare PC as a second digital cable box and pick up all of the channels with the right TV tuner card.

Anyone have any experience with this and some advice to share or a card to suggest? Thanks in advance.

[Edited on August 18, 2009 at 12:59 PM. Reason : ]

8/18/2009 12:59:22 PM

check in the htpc thread

8/18/2009 2:43:53 PM

Yah, search told me no extra channels on the PC. It sounds like just a decent tuner will work fine with TWC basic cable.

8/18/2009 3:01:46 PM

you need a tuner that has a cablecard slot to be able to pick up all the TWC digital channels.

http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonderdigital/index.html is the only one on the market that i know of. you can pick one up on ebay.

TWC leases cablecards for $2.50/ea/mo. just be aware that even though the FCC requires them to provide cablecards, TWC makes it a huge pain in the ass for you to actually GET one.

8/18/2009 5:27:42 PM

^not hard to get them.

But yeah, you need an ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable tuner. They make internal and external versions. External ones are pretty easy to get on ebay, internal ones are available from Dell, both usually cost ~200 bucks.

But if all you have is basic digital cable, all you need is a tuner card that supports clearQAM. I get ~140 channels on my Happauge 2250, including all the music channels and such. You only need a cablecard tuner for encrypted QAM channels (ESPN, premium movie channels, premium HD channels)

8/18/2009 10:33:15 PM

Quote :

"not hard to get them."

in raleigh/cary/durham, it is.

Quote :

"But if all you have is basic digital cable, all you need is a tuner card that supports clearQAM. I get ~140 channels on my Happauge 2250, including all the music channels and such. You only need a cablecard tuner for encrypted QAM channels (ESPN, premium movie channels, premium HD channels)"

the vast majority of the digital channels on TWC are not clear QAM. the only ones i was able to get without cablecards were the locals in HD, some telemundo/telefutura shit, and a few other channels.

8/19/2009 2:47:54 AM

What card were you using?

And at least according to AVSforum, it's not hard, you just have to know what you're asking for... very specifically.

8/19/2009 3:20:18 AM

that's cool as shit. i had no idea those existed.

8/19/2009 8:24:51 AM

^^doesn't get much more specific than "i need 2 cablecards for my tivo series3. yes, i need two. no, you're wrong, i need two."

it took me the better part of an hour to convince them that i needed two cablecards. even then, their system wouldn't let them put in a request for 2 cablecards without adding 2 more STBs... so they ordered one and put it in the notes on the work order to bring another.

then the installer cancelled the appointment on me 3 times

then when they finally got there, the first thing out of the guy's mouth was "this is my first time doing one of these things." he also, of course, only brought 1 m-card, and then tried to convince me that i was wrong and that my tivo could only work with one. he refused to admit that i was right even when i showed him that only 1 tuner was functioning. he claimed that the card was malfunctioning, so he went back to the warehouse and got 2 m-cards (was gone for 3 hours), ended up putting them both in.

he was at my house for 4 hours and i ended up being the one on the phone with the person at the headend who needed to put my IDs into their billing system because the dude didn't know wtf he was doing.

granted, this was almost 2 years ago, so maybe TWC has shaped up after they got slapped with that cablecard fine in hawaii by the FCC (believe me, when they rolled out SDV i wrote my fair share of complaints to the FCC).

also, a quick cursory scan of my cable with just my TV's QAM tuner turns up the same thing. the vast majority of TWC's offerings are encrypted.

8/19/2009 12:52:34 PM

^yeah, things have gotten tremendously better over the past year. Because of folks like you, they can see us coming now

8/19/2009 7:13:26 PM

i use an ati tv wonder 650 usb and sagetv. works great. was thinking about installing xp mce just for better gui

8/23/2009 8:52:12 PM

The first 15 mins of Google didn't help with this:

I have a winfast tv2000 deluxe from back in the day of analog. I channel scan and end up with 3 crappy ones with no audio. Am I just SOL or is there a way to update it to be able to get digital channels. I just have basic TWC (the 8-channel basic, not the 80-channel basic) but it'd be nice once in a blue moon to have access from the computer. Is it as simple as a driver update?

8/23/2009 10:09:35 PM

The TV2000 is an NTSC only tuner (not atsc or clearqam) so all you should be able to get through coax is whatever TWC has unblocked for your line, as analog channels. I know with my old TV2000 (or whatever the hell old analog tuner it was from leadtek) I could get 2-99, except for 81 which was transitioned to digital. But this was on Charter out on the coast.

8/23/2009 10:14:48 PM

^^ what program are you using to access the tuner stream? i played with about 4 or 5 trial versions before i bought sagetv. some didnt work for me at all, i thought i had a busted usb port at first and i was using a brand new device with [updated/debugged] new drivers at the time

there are some that let you get really specific with what you're trying to scan for, i'll try to find a list of the trialware i went through before i made my choice.

8/24/2009 7:18:22 AM