RE: TV Tuner

["Kevin Ross" <kevin@familyross.net>]

> From: Thomas H. George [mailto:lists@tomgeorge.info]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 12:47 PM
> 
> I recently emeraged from the dark ages and purchased a 23" LCD monitor.
> Now I am wondering about purchasing a TV tuner and connecting the cable
> box (Comcast) to the pc rather than replacing my 15 year old analog tv
> set.  Nothing larger than a 27" LCD TV will fit in the solid cherry tv
> cabinet, hardly large than the monitor.
> 
> Any comments?

Are you wanting to put a small form factor computer into the cabinet with
the monitor?  If so, you could get a small case, such as
http://www.mini-box.com/M300-Enclosure-w-Bootable-CF-Reader_2?sc=8&category=
87 and a mini-ITX motherboard, such as the Zotac NVIDIA IONITX-A-U board.
As long as you use VDPAU-enabled versions of the video playback apps
(mplayer, mythtv, xbmc, etc.), it can play back fullscreen 1080p video with
hardly any CPU usage.

As for tuner cards, the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1250 works well, I have one.
It's PCI Express. There are also PCI, USB, and networked tuners, such as the
HDHomeRun.  However, with a tuner card, it's highly likely the only channels
that won't be encrypted will be your locals.

Another option is the Hauppage HD PVR device.  It is a video capture device,
that will record HD video from the component video outputs from the Comcast
cable box.  It also records audio from optical S/PDIF.  You will likely need
an IR blaster so that the computer can tell the cable box to change
channels, if you want to use the computer as a PVR with MythTV.

I invite you to come over to the Linux HTPC section on AVS Forums
(http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=76) where we blab on and
on about HTPC's with Linux.

Hope this helps!
-- Kevin