HDTV Tuner Card

If you are like many computer centered users, you are watching more and more video including TV shows on your computer's screen. Whether at home, the office or at the coffee shop, more and more people are ditching their TV's for their computer screens. One way to watch live broadcasts of TV without having to connect to the internet is with an HDTV tuner card. HDTV Tuners are perfect for watching over the air broadcasts of not only analog TV signals, but HD (high definition) TV signals as well.

Two Types of HDTV Tuner Cards

There are generally two types of HDTV tuner cards, the first are PCI cards made to slip into your laptop, the other type are now more common and convenient. They are USB devices that look like Jump Drives and plug into your computers USB.

Computer Hardware & Software Requirements

Generally speaking, most computers have the capability of viewing TV by HDTV tuner cards. A computer should have a graphics card with at least 64 MB, an 800 MHZ processor and an operating system of Windows 2000 or above. When you purchase an HDTV tuner card, you will not only receive the actual tuner, but software to operate your tuner and in many cases a remote control. Besides software that comes with your HDTV tuner you can also opt to download free software to help you record TV shows on your hard drive- just like a Tivo.

Picking Up Signals from Cable and Satellite Broadcasts

It should be noted that HDTV tuners only pick up free, unencrypted HDTV signals. This means that besides the common networks, you probably will not be able to pick up any additional channels from satellite. HDTV tuners can hook directly to older cable boxes- but most only include connections to analog devices.