TV on my laptop?

Tosh · #1 02-10-2005, 11:38 PM

Whats the best way to get TV with a decent picture on a laptop? Any chance they have a nice easy to use USB TV card yet?

Eratosthenes · #2 02-11-2005, 12:09 AM

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Whats the best way to get TV with a decent picture on a laptop? Any chance they have a nice easy to use USB TV card yet?

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Hauppauge has a usb tv tuner for less than $100. I think there are some others around also. I have not used the Hauppauge usb tuner, but I have used their Win-TV-250 PCI card and it gives very good quality. I suspect that you would need a usb 2 port. The software that comes with the pci card is OK (pause and record etc). Hauppauge has a pretty good rep. You might check to see if ATI has one--it would be cheaper, but probably not as good.

tylerdurden · #3 02-11-2005, 12:21 AM

http://www.google.com/search?&q=usb%20tv%20tuner

Tosh · #4 02-11-2005, 09:25 AM

Silly question, sorry, but I can plug that thing into my laptop and watch TV right? I don't need anything else that doesn't come with it?

Patrick del Poker Grande · #5 02-11-2005, 10:52 AM

Get a Windows XP Media Center Edition laptop.

Eratosthenes · #6 02-11-2005, 11:48 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Silly question, sorry, but I can plug that thing into my laptop and watch TV right? I don't need anything else that doesn't come with it?

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I'm thinking--

These things use the sound card on the PC, so your laptop sound card has to be working.

You will need a cable to connect your TV signal source (cable box or whatever) to the TV receiver. For me that meant a coax splitter (available at WalMart) and a short piece of coax. This thing will have to be wired to your cable box or antenna--no carrying the laptop to the bathroom. The usb tv receiver gets its power from the wall socket, so it is not portable.

I looked up their web page and see one more thing:

They say you need a pentium II, 733 or faster. That might be cutting it a little close. I have seen the PCI version work on PIII, 800mHz with no problem. If you will be watching TV, playing poker, running PT & PV you may need more computer--I don't know without trying it. If you are going to do any TV pause and replay you'll need substantial free hard drive space (1-2 GB??). If you want to time-shift a show, you'll need even more.

This works for old-fashioned analog TV, not HDTV.