I want to buy a HP TV tuner for Vista(brand new) but I still have a few questions about exactly how it work. 1-How exactly do you watch TV(cable)? Is it wireless, or do you have to have something running from the cable box? 2-If you have to connect your PC directly to your cable box, do you need any new equipment? 3-Can you watch TV on your computer and TV simultaneously? So your the tuner card is essentially an extra DVR? 4-What gets better quality; composite or S-video? There's a few questions here, but if anyone could answer my questions, I'd be mighty grateful.
I dont own that card but I'll try to help as no one else has yet. but before i answer your questions, here is some general info about PCTV cards: imagine the card is like a TV set - you have 2 types of input - tuner (channels 1 to 40) and composite (channel 0/AV1). with the viewer software (such as media center) you can choose to watch 'normal' broadcast tv by pluging an ariel in to the card and selecting from channels 1 to 40, or you can watch your freeview/cable tv/dvd player/video recorder etc by pluging it scart cable into the composite and selecting channel0/AV1. 1- you connect your cable tv box to the composite input via a scart cable. 2- you may need a scart break-out cable to convert scart to red/white/yellow plugs - you may have seen these cables with games consoles. 3- you can do this if you have a break-out box that will split one signal input into 2 signal output (think of a Y connection) - 1 goes to your TV the other to your PC. 4- S-Video is better quality than Composite, but unless the tuner card is HD i doubt you'll see a massive difference... I hope some of this helps...
