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.
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