Confused about TV cards in general

[mo24]

Hey, hopefully someone can help me out with this..

I'm a newbie to video related electronics, but i've been reading up lately hoping to purchase a tv card in order to allow me to watch TV directly on my PC monitor. "Capturing" it to the hard-drive is no concern at all to me since my satellite receiver already has a built in tivo-style pvr that serves all those purposes and more. I'm merely interested on being able to watch live TV on my PC monitor whenever I wish. The receiver is two in one, so another in the household could watch one channel on primary TV while I could watch the other on my PC monitor (at least that is the plan.)

Problem is, i'm confused about a few basic things that I hope you could answer for me:

1) My satellite receiver appears to have what I believe are called 'COMPOSITE' jacks. Three female plugs on the back, one labeled for Video output, and two for Audio left/right channel. They look identical to me other than coloring. I understand where the video plug would connect to on a TV card, but what about the sound? I've seen TV cards with what appear to be no audio inputs, only audio output. The video composite jack doesn't contain audio signal does it? What would I hook the audio outputs on the receiver up to on the computer then to watch synced video/sound TV on the PC? In that case I would think sound card, but by the look of it I don't think the connector would fit in my soundcard's line in jack. I've also saw mention of 'plugging tv card's audio output to sound card', but I don't see what the purpose of that is since there is no line input going into the TV card..(?)

2) Regarding picture quality... most TVs output at low resolutions, such as in the range of 400x300 or 700x500 correct? What would this appear like on a monitor running at a much higher resolution? Would the picture just be shrunk into a small window on the screen, or would extra pixels be added to 'stretch' it? (and effectively distorting the picture some)

3) Picture quality again. My main monitor is a high priced Viewsonic 17" LCD. If I wanted to watch TV on it while doing other things (surfing the web, etc), running at 1280x1024 native resolution, how would the TV picture quality be on it? My primary TV is an old 26" RCA ColorTrak 2000 (made in 1983 I believe). Do you think the picture sitting close up to the LCD monitor would be worse than on the actual TV? I know LCDs generally have worse picture quality for lower resolutions than CRTs, but just how worse i'm not sure. If it's much worse quality, I would probably be better off just purchasing another small TV for the separate room even though it would take up space.

Thanks for any advice you can give...

[jdizzy40]

Cable gets connected to the TV Tuner card. The TV Tuner in the computer gets it s sound one of two ways. Line out of the TV Tuner to Line in of your sound card. Some tuners such as WIn PVR 250 gets sound directly (internally), no additional cable required. I use both ATI All In Wonder cards (Combo video and TV Tuner) and Win PVR 250's (TV Tuner). All are used with LCD monitors. Picture quality is great. Incoming signal quality as with any TV is very important. If you want to be able to surf the web and view TV, an ATI card 9600xt is the way to go. Software allows you to embed the TV in the web browser (Upper left side). Gives you access to scrolling channels (Through a prgram called Guide PLus). Guide Plus is a EPG or electronic programming guide that is bundled and installed with the hardware. Bottom line the ATI cards are hard to beat. I have owned 5 over the years and contrary to the bad press some give the cards, I have never had any installation problems or hardware failures. Good luck.

[Richard_G]

Yes, I can understand the confusion as you are talking about two different things. A TV card will allow you to watch TV on your PC. It need only have one input although it may well have others. The one input is for a connection to your TV aerial. In the card is a tuner that tunes into the TV signals from your aerial (just as the tuner in your TV does) and converts it into separate video and audio. It then feeds the video to the computer and, using appropriate software, displays the received pictures on your monitor. The audio from the tuner needs to get to your speakers somehow, so you will find a connection on the TV card that you connect to the Line In socket on your soundcard. This will allow you to watch and listen to broadcast TV on your computer.

If you want to watch satellite TV on your computer, that is a different matter. You still need a tuner but in this case, the tuner is in the satellite receiver. What comes out of the satellite receiver on the three phono/RCA jacks is composite video (yellow) and left and right audio (white and red). To display this output on your computer you need to connect the audio to the Line In on your soundcard and the video to a composite video in socket on the TV card (which most have). You will then be bypassing the tuner on the TV card. In fact, if you only ever want to use the computer to watch satellite using your existing satellite receiver, you don't actually need a TV card, just a video capture card with composite video in. However, as these are intended for people doing video capturing and editing tend to be more expensive than TV cards anyway. A lot of people use a TV card for cheap and cheerful video capture.

As for picture quality. You can ignore the quoted resolutions for TV broadcasts. After all, the TV quality doesn't look any worse on a 32" TV as it does on a 14" TV (assuming you've got a decent signal/picture in the first place). The picture you see on your monitor will look the same as the picture you see on a TV of the same size and type (CRT or LCD). The advantage with a TV card is that you will be able to display the picture either in full screen or in a smaller window. If you've got it in a small window, you still have enough spare space to have other windows open to allow you to be able to do other things at the same time.

[lordsmurf]

ATI AIW cards even have a "see-through" ability. So you can see the tv, but it's transparent enough to do work at the same time.

[mo24]

I think I understand now. Thanks for the explanations. I'm particularly happy to hear that the picture quality is still good on LCD monitors.

[Richard_G]

I wouldn't describe it as good, but it's no worse than an LCD TV. I use a (cheap) 17" LCD monitor and we have a 15" Samsung LCD TV in the bedroom. The picture on both them isn't as good as on a CRT but the monitor is no worse than the Samsung.