I have a couple of questions regarding a USB tuner device. I have seen many USB tuners claiming to be HD capable. Is it possible to get a high-quality HD picture with such a device? Secondly, will my old Pentium 4 2.0 GHz desktop work adequately with such a setup?
I have a PCI HDTV tuner for receiving Freesat in the UK from a Satellite Dish. I imagine that a USB device still needs the connection from a satelite dish cable so perhaps it would be just as good. Regarding the "old PC". Well, it needs USB 2.0 and I think you might be ok with the processor but its a gamble. More over you will need a decent graphics card and I suggest at least 256Mb on board ram for the video card and at least 1 gig of RAM in your Mobo. If you satisfy the above requirements and the video is choppy, it's probably your CPU being the bottleneck. Any dual-core CPU can handle HD no problem.
Interesting question! I would guess that PCI would be a faster data transfer method than USB. But how it affects the demands on the CPU is another matter that i can't answer. Try comparing system requirements for USB and PCI tuner devices on the web and see if the CPU or other requirements differ.
