Well, now I have my media center PC with a HD LCD monitor that has a VGA and HDMI in (HP Media Center PC 6000+). I have a TV tuner card that is capable of receiving HD video. So, I connected my HD cable box up to it. Now, here is the problem. My video card only has a VGA out. So I am running HDTV into my monitor with an analog signal. The picture quality does not look HD. If I connect the cable box up to the monitor straight from the box with the HDMI it looks wonderfull in HD. So, my question is, is it the tuner card or to get true hd will I need to upgrade my video card to one with an HDMI out? That seems to make sense to me. But I just do not want to go lay down a $100 or so dollars when I can not achieve what I want in the first place. I do not use my PC for gaming. All I want is some good HD video using Windows Media Center. Thanks.
If you want to watch HDTV on your monitor, and you have a cable box with an HDMI output, what's the point of connecting up the cable box to a PC tuner card? You can have the PC connected to the monitor via VGA and the cable box to the monitor via HDMI, and then switch inputs when you want to watch TV or use the computer. Or am I not understanding something? The only thing you won't be able to do is record HD content, is this your goal? I'm not sure they make video cards with an HDMI output. Since video cards only output digital video, what you see available are DVI output. Get a video card like an 8600GTS. Most include a dongle for component video out. But since you want HDMI, you need to get a DVI to HDMI cable also which are easy to find.
Yeah, I want to use WMC to record and such. I also have a remote for WMC. So, I do not want to have to use two remotes and have to go up to the monitor if I want to switch from a movie to TV. Thanks for your input. I'll take a look at that card.
John1800... I want to do the SAME exact thing! Did you have any luck with yours? I just got AT&T Uverse and if I connect it to my PC via Coax, I am not getting true HD--since HD doesn't go thru coax. So, now the TWO tuners that I bought are useless to me... I am looking for an HDMI INPUT card for my PC, but I'm finding that I might NOT be able to use the cablebox still. Something to do with the HDCP protection?!? Its like we're back to the days of TV networks trying to STOP you from recording their shows... PLEASE HELP if you have Cable HD TV on your PC now!
John, ferrisb has it right. If you use HDMI and try to record on your computer, you will have a hard time because of HDCP. So using a cable box with the PC is going to be an issue. If you look at the specs on those HD tuner cards, they will capture OTA signal only.
