how to capture digital tv

[kelvinblade]

i have digital cable at home and i have the leadtek winfast tv tuner.
i have a tv and i only have one cable box.

how do i set up so i can watch tv and capture at the same time but
different channels?

[Craig Tucker]

You can't

Just the same as you couldn't watch 2 different channels on 2 TV's with 1 cable box. To watch 2 seperate digital channels simultaneously you need 2 cable boxes.

[spooky]

I hope i am not stepping on Craig Tuckers toes in any way but ....
some digital converters have a bypass switch built in them, this will allow you to get your NON scrambled channels on your PC for example & then your regular channels from the cable box on your TV. If you are looking to for example watch HBO on the TV & record Showtime on your pc then Craigs answer is 100% correct, since the cable box is a tunner, & for the most part single tunner can only tune onto one channel.
If you want to be able to watch premium channels on your TV & the NON scrambled channels on your computer use the RCA ( or S-Video ) from your digital box & connect that to your TV & then the COAX ( RF ) cable would go to your Leadtek card.
HTH

[Craig Tucker]

Your not stepping on my toes . I suppose I really should of stated cable in the UK, as I am not familiar with systems in the US.

With my cable provider, you get 5 analogue channels and 1 digital channel. You can watch 2 different analogue channels on 2 TV sets simultaneously as they are not scrambled and do not need tuning with the cable box. However there is only 1 digital channel, this has to go through the cable box to descramble the signal and to select the channel you want to watch. So if you only have 1 cable box you can only watch 1 digital channel at a time, although there is nothing stopping you from splitting the output from the cable box to several TV sets.

I myself have the output of my cable box split so it feeds 6 TV's and my PC. So each TV has channels 1 to 6. 1-5 are the analogue channels and 6 is the digital channel. If you select channel 6 you will be watching whatever channel the cable box is tuned to. There is no way to watch 2 different digital channels on 2 TV's simultaneously (without a second box)

[The village idiot]

You also may be able to step up your capture card to one of the digital cards. There are at least 2, one will do digital satellite, and broadcast. The other may only do ATSC type decoding, which may be the type for your cable company. Then again, maybe none of that will work.

Last choice would be to get one of the new cable boxes that will allow you to record 2 shows onto its hard drive at one time, one of which you can watch while it is recording. Check with your cable company to see when they will have them available. I think it works with guide+ for your scheduling needs, so you won't need to pay for a service like Tivo.