Computer TV Tuner
A computer TV tuner is a computer hardware device that converts the standard analog TV signals it receives and demodulates them into their digital form. Sometimes the TV tuner capability is provided on the graphics card itself, for example, in the All-in-Wonder series manufactured by ATI Technologies. Such graphics cards are higher priced.
TV Tuner cards are excellent for users wishing to simultaneously browse the Internet and catch favorite TV shows. Most TV tuner cards allow users to pause, rewind and save television programs onto their hard disks.
TV tuner cards can both be internal PCI cards, which are more common, or externally connected USB devices, and come in three primary types:
- Analog TV tuner card
- Digital TV tuner card
- Hybrids (retaining both the analog and digital signals)
Analog TV Tuners
The lesser expensive analog TV tuners process the signals by putting the load directly on the computer's processor.
Digital TV Tuners
These tuners are used to broadcast Digital TV, which has many advantages over analog TV, including the need for lesser bandwidth and the possibility of high-definition television.
Hybrid TV Tuners
The most sophisticated of the TV tuners, hybrid tuners have dedicated graphics processors that encode the incoming signal to MPEG – thereby putting far less load on your processor.
Many TV tuners can also receive FM radio, as well as convert your TV signal into composite video.
More efficient results are achieved with either a Fire Wire or the USB 2.0 TV tuner card, both of which are on the more expensive side. They often have many more features built-in to them, such as recording of the programs and saving them to optical media or hard disks.
Higher end models even have removable flash memory to make file sharing a breeze.
Older TV tuner cards are based on NTSC/PAL TV broadcast signals, but higher end models can also process HDTV (High Definition TV) broadcasts. Many can accommodate wireless remote control via infra-red as well.
|
|
Comments (2)
Leave a Reply
- HDTV Tuner Card
If you are like many other computer users, you might be watching more videos (including TV shows) on your computer. Whether at home, the office, or coffee shop, more people are ditching their TVs for their computers. One way to watch live TV broadcasts without having to connect to the Internet is with an HDTV [...]...
- ATSC Tuner
An ATSC tuner is a device that is used in the reception of digital TV signals (DTV), including HDTV (High Definition TV) signals. An ATSC tuner is specifically used by broadcast television stations in North America to send their over the air TV signals to homes that have a television with either an internal ATSC [...]...
- How to Download a Video from a Camcorder to a Computer
The process of downloading a video from a camcorder to a computer depends on whether the camcorder is digital or analog (old-style camcorder that uses tapes). For an analog camcorder, install a signal digitizer card in the computer, which is fairly common with today’s readily available off-the-shelf TV tuner cards. This card converts the analog [...]...
- DirecTV Access Cards
A DirecTV access card is a type of electronic card, roughly the size of a credit card, which provides programming to subscribers. DirecTV access cards may be provided to a customer along with his/her receiver box or separately, but must be activated before any programming can be used. When the user chooses a package and [...]...
- HD Upconverter
An HD Upconverter (High Definition Upconverter) is a device that converts the digital data embedded in DVDs into a format that can be directly viewed on a HDTV (High-Definition Television) without an intermediate conversion to an analog signal. An upconverter also digitally enhances and enlarges the standard lower resolution of some DVDs and ‘upconverts’ it [...]...
i have intex internal tv tuners card with remote but am i anable to tunne radio and when i starst it show option tv or radio(FM) but unabel to tune radio why
Did you connect the antenna to it? I’m not sure why else it wouldn’t work except maybe driver issues, faulty card or bad software..