TV card info needed

[Bucko/A51]

Hi to everyone on the forum, i`m new here

I would really appreciate anyones advice/opinions on choosing a TV card for my pc (AS45GT motherboard, P4 2.4 not overclocked, 512mb ram DDR 333 ATI Radeon pro 9700 gfx card)

The issue that is confusing me the most is support for cable TV, I want to watch digital cable channels that I have subscribed to on my PC, do any cards support this? or will I have to plug the cable box into the card, thus degrading the digital VCR capability of the card (since there would be no way for the PC to change channels on the cable box) oh if it means anything to anyone my cable provider is NTL home, a UK based company.

Hope you guys can help!

[Aedan]

You're probably out of luck here. The digital boxes use a system whereby NTL can set which channels the box will receive. This requires the box to have an address on the NTL network, so it can respond to queries that NTL make to it. It also needs to talk ATM, as well as run NTL's particular software used on their systems.

All of this means that the answer is generally "No", as the card would have to be NTL specific.

Áedán

[Aedan]

I may have been a little hasty in my conclusions.

The access control mechanism may well be CAM based, and would require some form of CAM (Conditional Access Module) on the receiver card. With no CAM, you'll only be able to pick up the 5 terrestrial channels. In addition, the card would need to support DVB-C (Digital Video Broadcast - Cable). You'd also need to know the symbol rate, the frequency and the FEC type used by the channel, and hope that the DVB-C card could read the TS (transport stream) for that channel multiplex.

I guess you could still say that was a "no".

Áedán

[Bucko/A51]

Hmm as I suspected, well, I`ll have a chat with NTL myself I think, replacing TV card with TiVO so they understand what i`m going on about. Failing that, I wonder if I could rig something to send IR commands from my pc to change channels that way, now theres an idea for a project.

[Aedan]

Originally posted by Bucko/A51
Failing that, I wonder if I could rig something to send IR commands from my pc to change channels that way, now theres an idea for a project.

I'm pretty sure there's some stuff out there that can do exactly that!

Áedán

[Bucko/A51]

any idea where??

[robbie]

Originally posted by Bucko/A51
Hmm as I suspected, well, I`ll have a chat with NTL myself I think, replacing TV card with TiVO so they understand what i`m going on about. Failing that, I wonder if I could rig something to send IR commands from my pc to change channels that way, now theres an idea for a project.

I use to have a program on my Palm that would do that. It was cool. I could also "program" the Palm just buy using the remote that came with the TV

Rob.

[Jazz]

Humm look for x10 type devices at one time i remember they had a serial ir transiever. It would learn your remote commands and then transmit them to the tv or other device whenever needed. Actually ibm had a pc that had a ir controller for your tv. That was about 5 years ago but it was neat, alas it never took off. Unless your cable co has not invested in quality set tops you should get dvd qual video from them. I have a couple in my house that have componet video outs. Looks great on my computer. At least the digital chans do.