[mythtv-users] TV Tuner for mom's computer

Mark J. Small msmall at eastlink.ca
Thu Nov 8 21:25:52 UTC 2012


On November 8, 2012, Marc Paré wrote:
>  Le 2012-11-08 15:38, Marc Paré a écrit :
>  My mother is moving to a retirement home and I am driving up to help out
> re-connecting all tech stuff. She recently got a notice that her Cable
> service will go all HD by end of November, so her analog PCI TV card will
> stop working. She is 78 yrs old, likes to watch TV and play solitaire at
> the same time on her 24in LCD monitor. Location: Sudbury Ontario.
> 
>  What card would you suggest for her system? I can't remember her mobo
> maker, but what I do know is that
> 
>  * there are 2 PCI slots NO PCIe SLOTS
>  * RAM is 2 gig
>  * hardrive is 250gigs
>  * she has an NVidia video card -- can't remember the model, but nothing
> fancy
> 
>  I was looking at this card:
> http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=44_563&item_id=Q7824
> 4
> 
>  It looks like PCI cards are definitely getting harder to find! Are there
> external USB cards that would work? She will be hooking up through a cable
> set-top box.
> 
>  Cheers,
> 
>  Marc
> 
> 
>  I forgot to mention that she is running Mageia2 Linux.
> 
>  Cheers,
> 
>  Marc


Is her cable company going all digital or all HD?  If it is just digital and 
she's not doing the HD thing, then I'd reuse the existing card and get a 
decent IR blaster to go along with it.  

My cable company went all digital a few years back. I'm running three analog 
tuners with three Standard Def cable boxes and IR Blasters to control each 
ofthem.  

Since she is Sudbury, she is probably on Eastlink.  I know that they charge 
extra for HD signals.  If she isn't going to pay for HD, then find out if her 
cable box has composite or coax outputs.  These will feed in to your old 
analog card happily.  Check the wiki for IR blaster use.

Hope this helps,

Mark


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