TV Tuner Card

chrisba

chrisba

chrisba

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3 Apr 2008
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Im in the process of building a media centre pc although im stumped over the tv tuner cards that are about.

What i WANT is to be able to use all the features of Windows Media Centre i.e tv, radio and recording tv to my HDD.

Am i also able to play virgin media channels through windows and record programs from that or am i limited to freeview and analogue channels?

Any help/advice much appreciated.

CHEERS! :D
 
you would need to subscrive to virgin media as far as I am aware to get their package of channels, which tbh arent all that great, the Virgin branded ones anyway, basically just have old series of shows that may or may not cost you to view- atleast thats what its like on mine, I also dont really know what extra channels you get over free view (havnt really been bothered to look at the lists)
 
ash_scotland88 said:
you would need to subscrive to virgin media as far as I am aware to get their package of channels, which tbh arent all that great, the Virgin branded ones anyway, basically just have old series of shows that may or may not cost you to view- atleast thats what its like on mine, I also dont really know what extra channels you get over free view (havnt really been bothered to look at the lists)
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I already have virgin media, does that mean i can record channels from virgin with the tv card?
 
The Nova T500 dual freeview tuner integrates nicely with media centre,using one at the moment in my own HTPC,it picks up a good selection of digi TV and Radio channels,I scrapped the nebula digi card for the Nova T dual to the dual tuner functionality and the apparent lack of support the Nebula was getting.

It picks up one or 2 Virgin channels,I can't remember off hand what they are,I don't really watch 'em tbh.
 
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As far as I know are no cards that have a virgin tuner. The only way to do it is take a cable of the virgin box and into the tuner. The box would do the channel selection and decoding.

Other than that I have no idea whats good..
 
You can't get more then the free to air chans off virgin as all the rest are scrambled and there is no output apart from a scart on their boxes.

I used an F splitter and ran a cable into my old analogue tuner, got about 10 chans on it, sky news etc.
 
I am trying to decide on a card as well.

How are the DVB-S cards? What do they actually pick up and do they pickup the usual freeviews as well?

thanks.
 
I'll be getting one of these soon to but can't really find much useful information about this subject on the net.

I have a few questions if anyones in the know?

Will a tv tuner card hook up with the cable set-top-box I have and therefore allow me to tape channels from it?

Even though the Nova t500 is a digital reciever will it still see and record input via the cable (analogue I guess) box too?
 
What you can do is get the cards (i think there DVB-S) that you setup as such:

Plug in your sky box or virgin box normally, but run the areil cable out to your TV card in your pc, and the PC is tuned to pick this up as a channel (much like the old days of having say channel 6 set to sky on your TV). Then there is little IR emitters that you plug into the back of the TV car and then stick over the reciever in the sky or virgin box. through some fiddling and setting up you then have it so that Media centre changes the channel on your sky or virgin box by sending the ir signal through this wire.

Its a botched way round, never really liked it, and it gets messed up if you try to use the skybox on its own too (channels get out of sync). If you can cope with freeview, have a freeview card, if you really want the extended sky and virgin channels then get a sky+ or V+ box.
 
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