TV Card... For A Uni Laptop

DAnDan

DAnDan

DAnDan

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Joined
22 Feb 2008
Posts
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I'm hopefully off to uni in September, and will be taking my laptop with me, a Dell XPS M1530, I'm looking to get a TV card that I can use with my laptop, instead of having to get a small TV for my room.

This is where you all come in, I have absolultely no knowledge about these, I'm not too fussed if it's USB or PCMCIA (I think that's what it's called), but it needs to be able to pick up freeview if possible and just work well.

I have up to £100 to spend at the moment, but obviously the cheaper the better, as with all things. So basically I'm just looking for recommedations from people who have used them already.

Thanks :).
 
Forgot to mention, the laptop is running Vista 32, but I will probably install Vista 64 on it, so it needs to work with that.
 
It would have to be a USB one from looking at what's available, there is a lot of USB ones around, but they all seems to say roughly the same but not be too clear.
 
The problem with those is that you have to have a really good internet connection, and they're not live. It's like BBC iPlayer, but i would have thought that they wanted a tv card to watch live tv.
 
Superewza said:
The problem with those is that you have to have a really good internet connection, and they're not live. It's like BBC iPlayer, but i would have thought that they wanted a tv card to watch live tv.
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They've both live TV (I know TVCatchup's name is missleading) and they both work fine on 8mb ADSL.

TVCatchup has pretty much the same selection of channels as freeview, Zatoo's is slightly different.
 
TVCatchup is "live", but being internet based does lag a little behind. Don't let the name confuse you. As for needing a good connection, it streamed fine over my 3 dongle in the middle of Devon yesterday.
 
Yeah I was wanting a TV card to watch TV, the normal 1-5 channels and the freeview ones as close to a normal TV as possible, just without the need to get an actual TV (saves space etc).
 
K.C. Leblanc said:
They've both live TV (I know TVCatchup's name is missleading) and they both work fine on 8mb ADSL.

TVCatchup has pretty much the same selection of channels as freeview, Zatoo's is slightly different.
Click to expand...

8MB is heaven for me. I'll be lucky if i get 0.6MB, then there has to be nobody else on in the street.
 
Just had a play around with those two websites, quite impressed actually! Would still like to know about the TV cards though.
 
There are loads available; I got one when I went to Uni three years ago. It's an external box that hooks up via USB and requires an aerial.

Although things have changed a fair bit since then I expect, back then if you got a cheap unit the software was terrible so make sure you read up on how easy they are to use before purchasing.
 
Yeah I heard some of the software was pretty dire, I was hoping someone here may have one of the newer ones available now and recommend it, or let me know which ones to run away from at great pace!
 
Make sure the card supports third-party software if you intend to use it though - mine didn't, so I was stuck with something that looked like it was designed by a caterpillar with a crayon.
 
so can any one actually recommend a good inexpensive tv card then ? ;)


websites are great and i may try them but im after a hardware solution :)
 
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