post links for cards that will work with dish network.
i am tossing a weak sauce media center in the bedroom for kicks.
from what i gather i need a dvb-s2 card. the only one i can find that doesn’t seem to suck is the HVR-4000; however, i can’t find it on this continent.
They got it in Europe…
HVR is Hauppauge or something right? What about the other cards by the same manufacturer?
http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=Hauppauge+WinTv&srt=t&mi=0&m=&view=
There are Twinhans that work too
Any tuner card will work. You just need an IR blaster to control the set top box.
you could use this too. My old man uses one to control the DVR box from another room in his house. You can then just keep WinTV (or whatever program you use) set to A/V in, channel 3, ect
works great
[quote=“itsJim,post:7,topic:39451"”]
Any tuner card will work. You just need an IR blaster to control the set top box.
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[quote=“Dr.Stevil,post:8,topic:39451"”]
you could use this too. My old man uses one to control the DVR box from another room in his house. You can then just keep WinTV (or whatever program you use) set to A/V in, channel 3, ect
http://www.smarthome.com/8220f.html
works great
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i think this is the way i am going to go for now.
thanks
[quote=“Zer0DazE,post:9,topic:39451"”]
i think this is the way i am going to go for now.
thanks
[/quote]
I’d go with an HD card though FYI (or a nicer card Standard Deff. card with decent inputs)
I had a hauppauge pvr150 that worked great for hooking it up via. coax cable, but if you wanted to say, hook a DVD player/PS2/VCR/ect into it via S-Vid or RCA, the video would work fine, but because it didn’t have audio in, I had to use an input on the sound card which was always coming in quicker than the video due to the cards encoder/decoder doing it’s thing before displaying the picture on screen
just a heads up.
I didn’t really care when I got my card, but I’ve run into numerous situations where I was kicking myself for not picking one up that had a better support for A/V in. It’s a nice feature to have
i am just putting it together with parts that are laying around.
if it doesn’t suck, then i will build a better mouse trap
bump, hows that going for you?
I don’t nec care about PVR’g… I primarily want to get sat. feed in and displaying on the monitor. The monitor itself only has a single DVId & VGA inputs.
HD would be nice, but not necessary, its only a 22" widescreen monitor (max 1680 x 1050).
So, recommend me a decent tuner card w/S-Vid or Coax input.
Oh yea, for Vista :redface:
ps - not concerned about remote or anything, this is a being fed by a dual tuner Dish Network box. So long as I can “switch inputs” on the monitor, i’m good.
If you’re just using coax, then anything should do fine for you although I’d stick to hauppauge (or any card certified for vista/media center for that matter).
Note that the signal won’t be going straight through to your monitor though, it’ll be decoded by your tuner card, and will display on screen via wintv or media center (or whatever 3rd party software you want to use).
If you just want to use your monitor as a display for your sat. box (IE, no software… which it sounds like your asking for from your post) you can probably get an HDMI to DVI adaptor, but then you’ll also have to somehow get audio to the monitor/speaker setup aswell via an audio out from the box.
The only problem with this is that it might not display correctly on screen as I don’t think it will support 1680x1050 resolution, but I have no real experience with this
This was basically how my train of thought progressed as well.
So, basically I’m looking at running a feed into a tuner card - having it display on the monitor (with w/e software interface), and control the feed via remote — I’d love to program the Dish remote to control the IR on the tuner card, even if solely to control volume. but eh.
It’ll prolly be 640x480 sized window i assume - but thats fine as the feed will be broadcast in 480i. This is not a primary TV.
The question becomes - what card / software am i going to have to use to control the sat box AS WELL AS the sound at teh PC?
I really don’t know shit about computers but stay away from the programs that have a DVR function. They delay the programming a few seconds and the remote won’t sync up right. (You’ll hit channel 4 and a few seconds after it gets buffered throught the program it’ll actually change.) Not a big deal except when/if you try to use the on-screen program guide. Its a PITA
good input, thanks.
yea, i’m not too worried about recording stuff, we have a couple of actual DVRs elsewhere.
This whole intent of this was to have access to sports games in the front room - i hate missing action of a good game if i have to do work on the pc that cant be done on the laptop.
I’m realizing it just may not be worth it… seems like with a 480i signal & 22" widescreen monitor, i’ll be watching what becomes a 11" window. :shrug:
actually, that’s not entirely true. It all depends on what card/software you are using, as well as the machine you’re using it on. I noticed that beyondTV (I think that was the program, or it was another 3rd party "PVR+Guide setup) was much much slower in this regard than winTV or media center. Those two were great IMO.
If you have a decently quick machine and a card with a good hardware encoder, this really shouldn’t be an issue IMO. The video will always lag a little bit as it has to be processed through the hardware, but it’s not too bad (for Adelphia is was maybe .5sec) and as long as the audio is synced, it’s not an issue.
As for quality of the picture, it’s not “too” bad actually if the tuner is getting a good signal… I believe that some of the 3rd party software apply filters and such to the video feed to improve image quality (de-interlacing, scanline, bicubic filtering). It’s not HD quality or even DVD, but it’s a lot better than regular TV.
Go check out a media center PC forums and see what others are doing :tup: Can probably get a better idea for what works and what doesn’t
g/l
Newer box:
Q6600
4gb 800mhz DDR2
8600 GT (6XX core spd i think) 256mb DDR3
Vista Home Premium (so i’ll be playing w/MCE)
Shouldn’t have too much of a processing prob… i hope. lol.
Alright, yea, I’ll wait on the choice and dig a little deeper into it.
Thanks for the input Steveo
np.
let me know which way you decide to go as I’m interested in setting up a HTPC/MCPC in the near future.
And also a heads up, if you plan on watching HD-DVD’s on it, you can buy an XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive on the cheap and it plugs right into your PC fine. Long as your equipment is HDCP ready, you’re good to go.