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  1. #1
    DF Rookie Muth's Avatar
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    Question Need a little savvy pls!

    Hi people,

    I'm generally OK as far as PC's go but am struggling with the choices out there regards turning my PC into a TV.

    I already tried the idiot-proof solution (or so I thought!) by buying a Sony Bravia DVB TV which was supposed to double as a monitor, and everything was great except it didn't work as a monitor! It could simply never accept any resolution my AGP card would pump out (unless I went to 600 x 400 which was not a step I wished to take!)

    So it's back to the drawing board because I now understand that other TV's from Phillips, Sony, Samsung and LG all also have this issue of claiming to handle, say 1440 x 900... but then telling you in the small print this is the screen resolution for video and that through the PC link you may get nothing like that quality!

    I have a cube PC, a Shuttle, running Win XP Professional SP2. It has a Radeon 9600 stuffed in the AGP slot and a USB card stuffed in the PCI slot. There are no more slots. It has an Intel 865 board, 2Gb of XMS DDR400 memory and a 478 Extreme Edition 3.4Ghz CPU and is connected to a TFT Lenavo 19" at 1440 x 900.

    What I'd like to do is find a USB dongle to let me capture DVB freeview channels, and play them without having to resort to buying MCE or Vista. If I can record then it' s a bonus, not an essential.

    I will have a coaxial feed, no worries there. But knowing which dongle is best under XP, and if I need specific viewing software is a bit of a puzzle.

    Would any solution suitable for the UK also still work when I am on my travels too? I'm planning on spending time in Russia within the next 12 months and can have a cable TV feed out there as well as terrestrial Ruskie TV.

    If all of this is asking too much I guess it's time to buy new hardware and make a move to Vista......

    Any and all help appreciated.

  2. #2
    DF VIP Member coin-op's Avatar
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    Default Re: Need a little savvy pls!

    I installed totalmedia, which is a bit like Media center, to use with my hauppauge card coz the bundled s/w is shite.
    As far as I am aware this is a free download from the geniatech site HERE

    It works with any hardware that utilises BDA drivers, so that's pretty much any fairly modern card.
    Can't recommend a stick for you, mine's a PCI card.
    Cheers - Coin-Op


  3. #3
    DF VIP Member tonys's Avatar
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    Default Re: Need a little savvy pls!

    Hauppage do usb digital TV decoders, I have a WinTV HVR-950 plugged into my system and it works well. The hardware does come with a remote control and WinTV2000 software which would appear to do what you are looking for although I cannot speak for the software as I do not use it.

    From a software perspective, I have played around with Vista Media Centre and Sage TV.

    Vista Media Centre looks very slick, the epg info is easy to setup and is generally a good solution for a single decoder terestrial setup.

    I now run Sage TV. Sage gives me the ability to run multiple decoders of a mixed type so I now push my sky through my PC and combine it with the freeview terestrial digital TV USB dongle. This gives me a good alround, stable media centre experience. Sage TV does take a bit of time to setup. Getting the channels line-up as you want it with guide info can be challenging. Once it is all running it is very stable and I love it.

    As for TV in Russia. First thing is, and it might be obvious but you won't be able to view UK channels in Russia with this setup.
    As for using your setup to view Russian cable. I guess it would be possible with the right cable decoder but cable is not part of the USB decoders capabilities - you would definitely need more hardware to do the cable deciding.

  4. #4
    DF VIP Member sinbrad's Avatar
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    Default Re: Need a little savvy pls!

    What Sony model you got? I have an LG 42" lcd and have HDTV from my PC running at 1280x720p resolution and it's stunning. It will all depend on the connection you are using as believe it or not each connection has different capabilities. If you let me know the Sony model a few pointers could be thrown in your direction? Looking at the radeon site the 9600 is capable of HDTV so I see no problems running at the appropriate resolution as long as you have the up to date drivers etc.
    Last edited by sinbrad; 11th March 2008 at 03:27 AM.

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