Question: I have been looking into TV-to-PC software to be able to watch TV from my PC. Some ads say 'download now, no additional hardware needed,' yet others say that a media card is needed, leaving me confused. Can anyone tell me the truth before I waste my money?

Would I need additional hardware like an antenna, a media card, and so on? Or can I really watch TV from my PC with just the software? What are the minimum requirements? How long will everything take to set up?

The bottom line is that I would like to watch TV on my computer, so what are all the possible ways I can go about doing so? Submitted by: John B. ******************************************************* Answer: Regarding watching TV on a PC.

There are several ways to accomplish the task of watching television on your PC: 1. Software-only solutions. It's hard to say without knowing exactly what service you're looking at, but it's important to keep something in mind: TV shows have to be broadcast from somewhere, somehow. Most software solutions are subscription or pay-as-you-watch services. Since you usually download or stream the show to your computer, you need to have a broadband Internet connection. Beyond that, hardware requirements vary by service (each service should list the requirements), but I would imagine Windows 2000 or later, 256MB of RAM, and a decent video card (32MB to 64MB or so) would suffice.

Pros: No hardware to install, you can usually pay once and repeat a viewing as often as you wish, and video quality tends to be very high. Cons: Quality can be spotty (depends on your Internet connection) and programming selection is currently limited as relatively few shows are available this way, although quite a few movies are available. Since video transmitted in this way is encoded to take up less space, your computer must decode it (meaning that you may encounter skips and stutters if you are watching a show while working with other programs). External USB TV Tuners - imagine plugging a cable box into your computer and turning your computer into a combination television/DVR. External tuners pkug into a USB port and generally have a range of inputs, including the typical screw-on (F-type) coaxial cable.

Some also have RCA and SVideo connectors, so you can attach a VCR or DVD player to capture video to your computer. Pros: Pay once (no subscription except for your current cable television), uses your existing cable television service for programming, often these devices will have bells and whistles like capturing/saving video to your computer. Many ATI products (possibly others) also scan closed captioning for certain keywords you specify and start recording when these are encountered in a program. Cons: Some people dislike external devices, requires existing television service and running a cable to the tuner box, quality will only be as good as what you'd see on a regular television equipped with cable (if your cable video quality is poor, the quality of video to your computer will also be poor). Internal TV Tuner card - basically, this is the same thing as the device above, only in internal card form, and therefore has comparable pros and cons. These devices tend to be a bit less expensive than their external brethren.

Since both types of devices have actual TV tuners, there is no video to 'decode.' I personally have an older ATI All-In-Wonder internal tv tuner card and love it.

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Installation was a snap - open case, insert card, close case, turn on computer, install software. I opted for an actual tv tuner because I wanted to watch the same programs I'd normally be watching if I was on the couch - basically giving me home office a TV like any other in my house.

Subscription/software solutions don't necessarily do that, although the day will come when such on-demand services will surpass 'regular' TV (especially after the selection improves). Something else to consider is the HD TV equation. None of the tv tuners I'm aware of are HD-compatible. One last thought - although it's a bit low-tech, you may want to consider buying a 13'-or-so REAL television for your home office. They take up little space and let you watch TV, DVDs, and so on without taking up any space on your computer screen.

Get one with integrated DVD player and carry it to the bedroom, kitchen, or patio. And, there's absolutely nothing to install on your computer. Submitted by: Andy F. Answer: There are a number of ways to get your PC to play TV. Which way you go for depends on various things like how much you want to spend, whether you want digital tv included, how good a picture quality you want, whether you want to make your computer into a TIVO box, etc. So let's have a look at a few solutions.

Firstly the software that says you can turn your PC into a TV without an additional card. Sounds too good to be true? Well that's probably because most of the time it is. TV without a card usually uses one of two different methods. The first method is to sell you a similar service to RealPlayer.

TV through the internet, this however has a number of problems. Firstly you have to pay a monthly subscription which is usually twice that what you pay for normal TV, secondly you use up a lot of your internet bandwidth so either other programs like file sharers will slow down or more commonly the video will jerk whilst playing, and thirdly your very limited to what you can watch, most of the time it's music videos or Big Brother. The other method that some software tries is use a hole on your computer as an ariel, like an ethernet port, and try and receive the channels with that, then decode them all with a software decoder. This is open to many problems, the main one being interference, and the other being the amount of processing time it takes up.

Software only TV reception is a poor solution and should be evaded. So now we've covered the non-TV boards lets move onto the TV boards. Getting a dedicated TV board is certainly the best option. From here on you need to be basing your decision on your requirements Firstly in video card land for PC's there is one main manufacturer, Hauppauge, these are to video like what Creative are to soundcards.

There are also a few other minor manufacturers as well. One of the most important things to consider with TV cards is shielding. A good card should either be outside the computer case (USB) so it can be moved away from the electronic emissions in the PC or very well shielded, especially if you intend to take programs straight from RF (not through a satellite, cable or video), because if it's not very well shielded you wont get very much unless you move to the house next door to the transmitter. If you are using a video, satellite or cable box to plug into your PC for the best quality picture you will need to plug them in via an S-Video or RCA (Yellow phono) sockets.

These are a lot less prone to interference than RF and produce a far better picture. If your satellite, cable or video box only has scart outputs you can easily get a cable to go scart to S-Video or RCA After you've decided how your going to plug your box in you then have the fun choice of what you want it for.

If you want a card just to watch TV through RF, you should be fine with a very basic USB TV card, like Hauppauge's USB-TV: If you want to just watch TV through a satellite, cable or VCR box then you could also go for the USB-Live solution, which doesn't have any RF tuner in it, but just receives straight from s-video or RCA. If you want to watch digital TV through your card without an extra box, you can get a TV card with DVB-T (Terrestrial Digital, Freeview in the UK) or DVB-S (Satellite Digital) built in, like the WinTV NOVA however as digital TV is really prone to interference and works on an all or nothing deal it most probably would work out better to get a separate digital box. If you want to watch all your shows in surround sound, get an AV receiver, have all the sound from your computer and TV boxes going into that, and have the TV out going to a basic TV card using RCA sockets. Don't try WinTV Theatre, I've got one and it was my biggest waste of money. If you want to do TIVO features, ensure the card you buy has a hardware MPEG encoder, not software as this will enable you to record everything in real time, like the Hauppauge WinTV PVR series. Also there is an important decision to be made regarding audio.

Some TV cards out there say they are Mono and some say they are Stereo. This only really matters if you are connecting the TV up through RF and not RCA or S-Video. If you are connecting it up through RCA or S-Video you will also have two more phono cables (usually black & white, or red and black or red and white). To get stereo TV out of any card just get a phono to 3.5mm adapter (which will probably come with the TV-card anyway, if not there only about. Just a word of advice: If you connect to the internet via a cable modem do not attempt to split the incoming line to connect the TV tuner card to the cable since this will affect your PC connection by deteriorating the incoming signal as well as slowing down your speed.

Instead, connect the tuner card to another cable jack and leave the cable modem on its own dedicated line. This advice was given to me by a senior TV cable technician in response to my efforts to connect both to the same incoming jack. I disagree about not connecting your tuner card to the same cable as your cable modem. I have under my desk a cable modem, an ATI All In Wondera TV Tuner card, Toshiba VCR, and a Sharp 13' TV all connected. Everything works fine. Charter was out a few weeks ago to fix a bad leadin wire from the street and tested my signal at my computer and it was fine.

The key to this is to first split the signal in the attic with a 2/way splitter with one side going to the cable modem/computer/vcr/tv and the other side going to another splitter (4 way in my case) to other outlets in my house. Everything works fine. Answer: As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Invariably you do need some way of getting the TV signal into your computer; this takes hardware. Now there are some monitors that have both digital (for your PC) and analog (like TV, VCR, etc.) inputs.

So let's take a step back. First we need to consider what your computer configuration is like. I am presuming that you currently do not have a multi-media PC (they have built-in TV reception video cards.

So almost invariably you will need to 'install' either an internal TV card (into an available PCI slot) or an external USB TV card to an available USB port. Next, your PC needs to have a certain amount of processing power; check the specifications of the video card before you buy it be sure your computer will support the card. In ballpark numbers, you will need about 700 MHz in your processor, at least 128 MB RAM (depending on the operating system) and a certain amount of hard disk space to install the software (video driver, etc.). If you also want to record the TV on your hard disk, you will need about 2 GBytes of space for each hour of video. You may want to get, if you don't already have one, a DVD writer for your PC - it saves a lot of hard disk space. Then you need to connect your computer to your TV source. Besides the distance for running the cable, you should consider if you will need an additional tuner box (for cable, digital cable and satellite), and how long the run is if you need to install an extension cable for the signal.

After that, connect the dots and, as always Submitted by: M. *********************************************************************** Answer: While I don't know all the DL of getting TV on the PC, I can say that I seriously doubt, unless John bought a pretty high end machine, that he can watch actual TV with just software. There would need to be some sort of tuner apparatus and converter to translate the signal to enable the computer to use it.

I have an older ATI Radion All-In-Wonder 7800 board that has served me well. I can grab frames from broadcasts, save clips and use my hard drive as a digital recorder. It also brought out 3-D rendering I never knew existed on a screensaver I bought!

The All-In-Wonders come with a remote and wireless receiver to allow you to control the functions. I am also able to capture input signals from digital or analog (my old 8mm Sony Handicam) with their supplied dongle and record to dvd. It has RCA and Digital pin jacks.

The only hard part was figuring out how to externally rig the audio output on the TV card into my sound card mic input and go into my volume (sound) control program panel on XP to enable the right option. Now my computer is rigged with an internal jumper from TV card to Sound card. Without doing that The support line for ATI is really helpful (they are in Canada) so, you won't be left out in the cold. (no pun intended).

Hope this helps! Submitted by: Taylor S. *********************************************************************** Answer: I had the same desire and found it very easy to make it happen. You need a high speed Internet connection for satisfactory TV reception. In my case, I used a gold plated splitter and connector cables to share my Cox cable input. One cable link goes to your modem as before, and the other connects to the TV card you will need to purchase.

Based on various write-ups on the Web, I purchased a relatively inexpensive WinPVR card. It fit right into an empty PCI slot on the mother board.

As I am running Windows XP Professional as my operating system, it was a simple plug and play installation. However, you also need to run the CD that carries the software for the tuner interface. The CD software bundle is included with the WinPVR card. Viewing results are best with a cathode ray tube monitor, but a flat panel liquid crystal display will work fine if it has a response time/refresh rate comparable to a CRT monitor. You should have at least 512 MB of RAM and a Pentium 4/Athlon processor of 1 Gig or better. An AGP video card or onboard video with 256 MB of memory is also recommended. You can get by with less, but viewing quality may suffer.

My setup uses an Athlon 2800 MHz processor and 1.5 Gigabytes of DDR RAM. The hardware and software installation was without problem. The whole thing took less than an hour, including cutting the Cox cable input and making the connections to the splitter. An added benefit of the WinPVR and most other TV cards, is that you can download and record a program to a DVD. Most of the software programs provide the means for setting the calendar and clock so that recording can be done even if you are not watching TV on your PC.

Submitted by: Franklyn S. *********************************************************************** Answer: Regarding TV to PC, I've used two types of hardware: AVERTV CARD BUS using a PCMCIA card into my laptop. It also has video in capability and an FM radio tuner. I bought if right after it came out from an Australian company.

As a result it came with a European CATV plug but adapters are available at Radio Shack. You get an FM antenna but if you want to watch TV on a train or bus or in the park, you better have a rabbit ears antenna that can be moved around.

If you are in a guest bedroom with a cable TV outlet but no TV set, you can plug into the cable TV outlet and use the remote that comes with the package to change channels. The image can fill the screen and only plays regular TV. SNAPSTREAM/VBOX UDB HDTV TUNER - I bought this before getting a real HDTV set for my cable service. The tuner is external and about the size of an external hard drive.

You either get a digital TV signal or you don't. No 'snow' like analog. So you must get enough signal which means line-of-sight is best. So when I set up a simple rabbit ears antenna on my terrace - which was completely surrounded by tall buildings - I never expected to get a signal. But.with some rotation and adjustments I received excellent HDTV signals from the local broadcast channels which I was able to record and playback with the SnapStream BeyondTV4 software. When I show people some HDTV shows from my laptop they really go bonkers - - thinking I have a new HDTV DVD.

Of course, digital HDTV files are HUUUUUUUUUGE. And Submitted by: Paul L. *********************************************************************** Answer: I had some of the same questions you had for a few years until i decided that I was going to figure it out. Yes, you need a TV tuner card. I have tried three cards and finally have a working solution. First, I bought a card from ebay (not one of my better decisions) that cost $1. That card came from China and it had a strange translation from Chinese (I assume) of the slogan, 'Easy TV, Easy your life.'

Well, that card worked for about a month and then just died. After that I still hadn't given up my quest for a TV tuner.

I went to CompUSA and bought a Hauppauge TV tuner card that absolutely did not work. I brought it back for store credit and bought the ATI TV Wonder Pro, which works with a few bugs in it. They are: (1) Scheduling recording works about every other time. (2) When I record TV it automatically saves as a.vcr file. When I play it back in the ATI file player, all it shows is fuzz. I can use the ATI Media Library program to convert it to mpeg-2 or mpeg-4, and after that the file will play. (3) The ATI file player is almost worthless.

It displays a frame about every 4 seconds, and the sound has huge gaps. I suggest VLC (Video Lan Client) which supports tons of codecs and plays my TV recordings most awesomely. Most TV cards are PCI cards, so obviously you need an open PCI slot in your PC. I have seen some USB tv tuners in stores, but that's about it.

For my TV card, the system requirements are: * Intel. Don't get sucked into the pay for programs that don't give anything more than what you can get without them! This site lists 1000's of channels you can get just using your browser. Expecting your usual channel lineup only available on cable, satelite, or local antenna? Forget about it! You'll need a TV Tunner card!

Don 2 Ringtone Mp3 Free Download Zedge. Expect to get HD channels over that analog card on cable? Forget about it! Not available yet! Wait until the next line of cards coming out with Vista!

I have the ADS HDTV Tunner Card and yes I can get HD stations, but not the ones available on cable! Only the ones available using an HD Antenna! Even with the analog stations available on this card the quality is still sub par performance compared to your normal TV so just get yourself a small Tv to place near your monitor if you must watch TV while working on your computer! Same Price better quality until the next generation tunner cards come out!;D. Hi, I just bought Pinnacle PCTV 60e to my laptop HP nx7010 and it really works superb. I connect the tuner (which is very small) to the USB and I installed a software (which is included on a CD), and then I had a TV!

Included is, also, a remote control. I can also record the programs. I highly recommend Pinnacle PCTV 60e! It has no problems in finding channels and the broadcasting is bright and clear! It will find the channels in your area.

It is really fantastic! I do not think that only a software will do it.

You will need, also, a tuner like in this system.' This system will produce an ordinary TV'! Best Regards, Bjorn Lundahl, Gothenburg, Sweden.

I have an older external Pinnacle PCTV unit that gave me problems from the start. When I initially bought the unit everything worked fine. Then as time went on the TV program became unstable and crashed regularly on me. Then the remote stopped controlling the tuner. I'd stay away from Pinnacle from my own experiences.

Also, check to see what programs are out there. I tried to use my tuner with other independent tuning programs and found that no Pinnacle devices were supported. Lastly, there are a few HD tuners out there, but they're more expensive and I'm not sure if they support anything more than broadcast HD-TV (ie. You won't be able to access all the channels that you can on your Cable box). I've been using a Pinnacle in-Pc tuner for a couple of years and haven't had any problems. I also have a Mercury tuner installed and am not as enthused about it.

They both have their good points. One thing I like about the Pinnacle is the ability to step ahead through the commercials. One thing I haven't seen mentioned about using a tuner is something I've been doing for years with my regular TV: I run the signal through a VCR so I can also record on it at the same time that I record directly to the hard drive. Usually separate programs but sometimes the same program program in case the PCTV messes up.

It has saved my bacon more than once. If you spend a couple dollars more than just the hardware card and get Sage TV, you can watch live TV on your PC and tons more.

You can record your favorite shows and watch them when you want (making your PC into a DVR (digital video recorder) and it has the capability of place shifting which is being able to install a small program on any remote computer and watch your recorded shows (or live TV) from any remote PC. If you want to watch your favorites or live TV while on the road, this is the perfect solution. If you have a son or daughter far away at college, they can watch their home teams play. I bought the software and my wife is even blown away by all it can do! I've been using ATI's HDTV Wonder card and antenna for about a year now to pick up the HDTV signals that my local stations are broadcasting.

For example, my local public TV station has 5 channels that they broadcast in HDTV (compared to the 1 conventional channel that they broadcast). Most of the networks have an HDTV broadcast channel, too. I don't pay any subscription fee because these signals are broadcast from their towers the way conventional signals are. A little antenna came in the box with the card, and it is adequate, but I found that I got better reception with an amplified antenna that I had been using for my TV. Apparently, FCC is requiring that all stations switch over to HDTV signal in a year or two because it takes up less bandwidth than a conventional signal. So, the HDTV Wonder card is installed in the PC.

(I had to get a newer video card to match the specifications of the HDTV Wonder card.) The antenna is attached to the HDTV Wonder card. The HDTV signal comes in over the air, gets picked up by the antenna, gets decoded by the software, and the program displays on my monitor in crystal clear digital form. The software also lets me record a program to my hard drive, or schedule the recorder to come on at a set time.

I can then save the program to a DVD to play in my DVD player later. If I'm trying to watch a station with a weak signal, I don't get 'fuzz' or 'snow' or 'static'. Since its a digital signal, a weak signal might cause the screen to go black for an instant and then come back, or make it go silent for an instant and then come back. I checked on several TV on your PC offers which require downloaded software but no hardware. I even subscribed to one service. It was a big disappointment.

Many stations are available but almost nothing that a person wants to see. I look for NBA and NFL or othe sporting events. The offer a lot of soccer from Europe but almost nothing of prime USA sports.

Then I heard from a friend about SLINGBOX from www.slingmedia.com. You can hook it up to your cable TV modem, then to the slingbox WHICH SENDS YOUR TV TO THE INTERNET and you can watch anything that is on your cable system ANYWHERE IN YOUR HOUSE, at work, CITY, STATE, OR ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. You can even remotely change channels, volume, etc. Some of the posts approached the system I use. Since my PC is in my home office which is in half of the large room that is also our bedroom I did the following: I have a Plextor video to USB external adapter that has both S-Video and regular A/V inputs (software switchable)at my PC.

Accross the room is our bedroom TV installation which includes a Direct TV Tivo box, a separate DVD player and a VCR all available to both the TV set (which I can easily see from the PC location) and the Plextor adapter. The Tivo and DVD have S-Vido feeds for the Plextor and the VCR has a A/V feed for the Plextor.

Normally only the Tivo is connected to the Plextor. The others are only hooked up occasionaly for dubbing to the DVD burner in the PC. When I want to copy a live program to DVD I record it on the Tivo and burn the DVD later, I could do it live in real time but why bother since I'd have to be present to do it.

The ConvertX software that came with the Plextor is excellent by the way for copying DVDs, creating simple or complex DVDs and simply watching TV, both full and small window on the PC. Since the Direct TV signal is digital (not HDTV) and recorded that way to the Tivo hard drive, the playback quality vis the S-Video cable is excellent. A nice bonus is that copying a DVD via the Plextor seems to pretty much bypass most copy protection schemes (but don't tell anyone that). I have the Hauppauge PVR 350.

It sort of works. Problem is there is always a sync delay between sound and video that is really annoying.

On top of that, the video quality is not great. It tends to be blurry, and the colors are off.

I've been using Hauppauge cards for 10 years, and I have never seen one that did not have these problems. There are 10,000 highly jargonized settings you can fiddle with, and none of them will improve the quality of reception. My PC is probably one of the best systems in the entire nation, and I'm a tech!!!! Wait on this.

Vista is coming out, and there is going to be a surge of new ( and better ) cards coming in. Many of them will be pci-e x1 cards with much improved bandwidth, and digital TV ready.

They will have 64 bit drivers and the X1 cards should be able to do very high speed software decoding and generate DVD quality TV in real time. Another thing. You are not going to do any of this on a poor PC with a cheap video card. Right now, I'm watching the PV-986 card. The Linux guys are playing with it. And so far, there are no USA dealers. It is an X1, and has both digital and analog capability.

It will be an interesting toy. As for Hauppauge, I emailed them about a year ago regards their sync problems. They know all about it. Caused by dropped video frames, so the audio gets tied to the wrong frames, and the sync problem gets worse and worse as you watch a show. Only solution is to restart WinTV2K, which re-syncs the audio and video. That is the state of the art right now, and Hauppauge is not going to do anything about it. And the X1 cards.

Just might solve it, and Hauppauge will play 'catchup' when the time comes, and I think their software is better. Brings up a good point - if you're after quality TV viewing, get a TV (haha).

But really, there are two distinct classes of 'not a video card' video cards, and we've only been talking about plain-jane TV Tuners thus far. The cheap direct-connect-to-cable cards don't do anything to 'clean up' a crummy cable signal.

The pro is that they require no processing time (either on the card or the CPU of your PC). Video capture and editing probably indicate a better type of device - something that can really clean up and process a signal, rather than just pass it to your monitor. If you plan to just WATCH (and your attention will waver often, since you're also working) almost anything would do. But if you plan on DOING something WITH that video, you'd be better off with a device that can process/encode/decode the video in various ways.

Hard Drive Installation (via WinZip) with Setup.exe File for R117581.EXE Download 1.Click Download Now, to download the file. 2. Dc Dmv Drivers Knowledge Test. When the File Download window appears, click Save (Windows XP users will click Save) this program to disk and click OK.

The Save In: window appears. 3.From the Save In: field, click the down arrow then click to select Desktop and click Save. The file will download to your desktop. 4.If the Download Complete window appears, click Close. The file icon appears on your desktop. Install 1.Double-click the new icon on the desktop labeled R117581.EXE.

2.The Self-Extracting window appears and prompts you to extract or unzip to C: DELL DRIVERS R117581. Write down this path so the executable (I.e. Setup.exe) file can be found later. 3.The Self-Extractor window appears. 5.After completing the file extraction, if the Self-Extractor window is still open, close it.

6.Click the Start button and then click Run. 7.Type C: DELL DRIVERS R117581 in the Open textbox and then click OK.

8.Follow the on-screen installation instructions.