vista and tv card questions

Willbo · 23 Mar 2006 at 06:31

Hey all, been thinking recently about a rig i can build for when the new windows comes out, any idea when this will be? any chance it will coincide with the release of the new amd cpus?

i'm currently thinking about adding a 2nd 20" monitor to my setup to use with a tv card, how would i go about setting all this up? if i got a radeon x1900 which has dual dvi, do i just connect both into that or what....sorry but i've never really dabbled with tv cards before until now.
also to go with the last question, whats the quality of picture like with tv cards? can you record live tv onto your hard drive?

BigDom · 23 Mar 2006 at 08:23

The new AMD CPU's are imminent so will be out well before Vista which I believe is slated for very late this year.

TV cards have a pretty decent picture quality and generally allow streaming to disk. You can also get dual tuner cards to allow recording on one channel and watching on another ( not sure if they allow recording on two channels at once ).

Pretty sure you can drag the TV screen onto a second monitor no problem, you just plug both monitors into your DVI outputs. You'd have to check whether it supports two DVI-VGA dongles though if neither of your monitors are DVI.

Willbo · 23 Mar 2006 at 09:28

what is a recommended tv card? what is good software to use along side a tv card to record programs, or is it all included usually?

ns400r · 23 Mar 2006 at 09:34

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17552582

BigDom · 23 Mar 2006 at 09:43

With Vista well and truly delayed I guess you'll be looking using XP or MCE.

Hauppage cards are good solid cards, various choices depending on preference really. They come down to two 'types' Freeview and normal analogue. You may as well look at freeview as the prices isn't much different and you usually get a DAB radio too.

I use the following cards (yes all 3 - Kids TV's and TV in my bedroom) :-

Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T PCI Freeview TV Tuner (GX-024-HA)
Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T USB Freeview TV Tuner - Not available on OcUK - just a USB version of the PCI card.
Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT DVB-T TV Tuner (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-000-TT) - This is a dual tuner freeview card on PCI-E ( not PCI ) - best to install the beta drivers (which seem to work fine) as there have been reports of problems with the drivers that come with the card.