Talk:TV tuner card

Inaccurate information?
"Use of TV cards is high amongst university students in western countries due to the demands of university work making personal computers very popular, the general lack of space in university accommodation and the cost of buying a separate television."

I'm not sure this is particularly interesting or relevant.

"These computer components are likely to fade from use should broadcast television continue it's slow decline in favour of Internet distributed content (though television itself is unlikely to follow such a decline due to the prevelence of cable and satellite television and the convergence of television, hi-fi systems, gaming systems and personal computers into "Home Entertainment Systems")." --172.200.220.36 19:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Surely this is just inaccurate? I think this is confusing the purchase of a separate TV Card with TV Cards as a piece of hardware built into the machine.  Surely TV cards will increase in numbers as they become standard components within the hardware showing the 'internet distributed content'? --bodnotbod 13:56, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)


 * No. I just bought a brand new computer and it did not have a TV card. You still have to get it installed manually or use an external card, like I do. Mike H 18:36, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)


 * And TV cards are cheap. Here in Chile I bought a TV card with FM radio and remote, and it was only CLP 19990 (USD 40 more or less) and it works great. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Coldplayer (talk • contribs) 15:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Bias
It is true, all to say that a TV tuner is a PC accessory. A TV tuner is a circuit (does not have to be an independent device) that takes an radio frequency signal and tunes it to a certain frequency (tv channel.) A TV tuner is present in many devices, including but not limited to TVs (of course), VCRs, DVRs, and, as we all know, PC tv tuner cards. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Anoncompboy (talk • contribs) 05:57, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
 * This article is about the "TV tuner card", which is apparently different from a "TV tuner". Possibly, a separate article should be created, or this one changed to encompass both the general meaning and this particular applications. —Centrx→talk 21:26, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It definitely should. As of now, 'TV Tuner' is redirected to 'TV Tuner card'. That's about as sloppy as redirecting from 'Graphics' to 'Graphics card'. --130.83.161.62 (talk) 09:57, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Needs a section to define OS requirements
On some kinds of TV card Tuners, OS requirements are very strict. In Windows Media Center edition their are only a hand full of TV Tuner Cards that are compatible with the Windows Media Center. and of course with mac their are other problems with requirements. --Gakhandal 06:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This almost entirely has to do with drivers, I think, and almost nothing to do with what operating system happens to be in use. Theshibboleth 06:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Two almosts, but very important almosts. To have a driver is not enough to have it work with certain Systems, like the aforementioned Media Center. You'll need a signed driver, i.e., a driver that's been approved by the system manufacturer. There are documented cases where that kind of approval has been denied. --130.83.161.62 (talk) 10:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Updated introductory section
I've rephrased the first section, brought it up to date, and removed a lot of stuff that doesn't really belong there and that is described better where it does belong.

What's still missing (apart from the OS requirements section that Gakahndal mentions) is a section describing the architecture of such a card. I'm thinking of writing one, but it'll take a while. If anybody else is working on this, please contact me via email. Groogle 02:35, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

UK TV ("BBC") Licence Requirements...
I wonder if anyone has ever asked a TV Licensing inspector if it's technically legal to exploit what appears to be a gaping loophole in UK law. That is, it seems to be okay to watch live TV on a laptop or other battery operated PC, as long as it is "powered by its own internal batteries" at the time -- and not the mains.

This is a point of contention for students living away from home, as the TVL website seems to contradict itself in this regard, by saying that battery operated portable TV sets are "covered by your parents' licence". It then says that a licence is needed for laptops with TV tuners... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.39.140.248 (talk) 22:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Limit of frequency range by country
The definition of 'country' in most cases is entirely up to the bundled control software. It usually has loads of frequency tables that often don't even match the most common cable operators in the given area. TV tuner itself can tune to any frequency, generally from 64 MHz and up, same goes for PAL and SECAM. NTSC might be a different thing, I don't know. -- J7n (talk) 14:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Outputs
S-Video input is mentioned. Do any of these cards have an S-Video output? Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 15:46, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

TV tuners for Playstation 2?
The PS2 uses an output of left/right (white/red) stereo sound along with composite video (yellow). New media computers come with input jacks for these, along with combo tuners. Shouldn't this be able to convert this analog PS2 input to be able to display the games on the monitor using Windows Media Center or something? Tyciol (talk) 23:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * This is not a relevant question to the article. If you want to know things like these, try Yahoo Answers or a message board. But if you must know, it would indeed be possible to view a PS2's video output that way, however the lag would make it very painful to play. --Serpinium (talk) 18:05, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

2012
This page is viewed up to 19,000 times a month,(stats) so it needs and deserves to be improved. Currently no references! --220  of  Borg 14:07, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It's 2016! And nearly 2017. And this is pretty horribly out of date, I don't believe there's any analogue TV stations left in the world (could be wrong, maybe Turkmenistan or somewhere). Certainly the vast majority of TV stations are digital now. And HDMI is no longer an emerging standard! It emerged! This article really needs bringing up to date. The information seems good, for what it is, but outdated. Much of it not relevant, and the rest needs tweaking.


 * I can't be bothered doing the research. I suppose I could just re-write it anyway and let the bunch of autistic hyenas that run this place tear into it. And the malfunctioning robots. But nah. I'm strictly here to point out the problem, solutions over that way -->.


 * 188.29.164.188 (talk) 15:05, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Digital broadcast demodulation is still possible with tuner cards, just maybe not hardware accelerated. Some TV tuner cards are used for SDR as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.34.28.225 (talk) 15:23, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

CPU Demodulation?
I believe the demodulation of the 8VSB, QPSK, 16QAM, or 64QAM always happens in the tuner card. The CPU may be used to DECODE the demodulated MPEG stream. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.233.173.209 (talk) 11:48, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Some cheap cards do rely on the CPU for a significant amount of the demodulation. Most notable nowadays is the RTL-SDR, which has the very nice side effect of making it very easy to use to receive signals besides TV.

Nowadays, MPEG decoding is typically done in the GPU. Thus, there is little demand for MPEG processors on tuner cards nowadays. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.112.211.111 (talk) 20:36, 27 October 2014 (UTC)