I've been wanting to watch TV through my PC, and with some research, I see that I'll need a TV turner. I have a 9800gtx installed and plenty of pci slots open for the turner. How exactly does one of these cards hook up with the cables etc. Such as, can I use a splitter from my cable modem, and connect it to the turner? Will my current video card be effected by adding in the turner card? Will I be able to record live shows and schedule different recordings? Also will it be possible to watch two shows at once on my monitor, like a picture in picture or a split screen? Lastly can my TV in the room display one channel, while my the channel on my monitor displays a completely different channel?

How bout HD channels? will they transfer to my pc?

What kind of tv turner cards would guys recommend.


Sorry for my lack of knowledge in this area, I know its a lot of questions. Anyone who can toss any extra information/answers my way would be most appreciative.
Thanks for reading

With regards to connections - whatever the Tv tuner has as inputs you can use the output of the medium you want to use.

Your current video card will not be effected - the graphics card doesn't have a tuner feature and the tuner and gpu runs off different software.

Live shows you can record. It's the sole purpose of a tuner card - watch TV on the PC and record. Depending on the bundled software of course. Same applies to scheduling, although most tuner cards do come with such software.

PiP depends on the amount of inputs you have - I do not know of tuner cards with multiple inputs (there should be available) and from a single source (TV) that might be hard to do, see below.

Splitting channels from tv in room to something different on your PC depends once again on the source. Here by us, dual view decoders allows for the decoder to provide two seperate channels - but with physical connections (ie 2x RCA Video and audio outputs). So it's possible, but the medium is the constraint.

HD - http://dvr.about.com/od/capturetvw [...] tahdtv.htm

This is over the air HDTV Tuner Cards in USB form. This might yield a better result for what you are after bar PiP.

TV tuners->you can use PCI-E , usb ( usb better don't have to work inside)

it has antennas to get signal and it connects to broadband shows in your area
and no directtv shows stuff like that so check at new egg

Connection of tuner is

TV tuner usb -> to PC
antennas to TV tuner it simple it has a diagram.

IF you use some kinda cable box and you wanna get all your channels you want to order another cable box from your company, also make sure you get a tuner card that comes with an IR blaster like the hauppage 1800
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6815116015

otherwise you may not get all your channels if you simply run a cable to the back of the tuner card.

Thanks all for the info