TV tuner advice

[Shotobits]

Hi, I want to watch and record tv on my pc, I haven't a clue what card I need, my os is winxp, psu is AMD Athlon dual core, mobo Asus M2V-MX, 2GB ddr2 800 ram
I live in the UK if thats relevant,

[fritzi93]

You need to consider a few things (no particular order) before it can be narrowed down:

1) Interface: PCI, PCIe, USB?
2) HDTV? Is your video card up to the job? It's not in your specs.
3) PVR software you'll use. Often it's bundled with the card. Or you may want to try some free alternatives, such as GBPVR.

Anyway, Hauppage is well thought of.

Personally, I have a Leadtek HDTV card, but I can't recommend them. The card itself is A-OK but the only soft that works with it is the bundled TotalMedia. (For the life of me, I couldn't get GBPVR to work, even using GraphEdit and manual entry of the drivers). Plus the remote sensor was DOA and in spite of a lengthy email campaign, could get no satisfaction, or even a place where I could BUY a replacement. But I use an iMon now, so no real problem, tho' it still rankles some.

All that is to say, read a lot of reviews. Steer clear of the ones with problems. I know you're in the U.K., but look at the tuner cards on the page below, and read the reviews of those that interest you. NewEgg sells a hell of a lot of stuff, and most products have quite a lot of reviews:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=47&name=TV-Tuners-Video-Devices

Good luck.

[Shotobits]

Thanks for the advice, I just bought a secondhand Skystar 2 DVB-S on ebay, it got good reviews
so I'll give it a go. thanks for your help

[KBeee]

So you wanted to watch and record Freesat?

[Shotobits]

No, just watch and record FTA - (free to air) all the free stuff you get with a sky digi box,