http://www.imagebam.com/image/25cfbc236640593
Hi all-
I’ll be installing a very basic TV tuner card next week and I’m unsure of how exactly to hook it up to my cable. Above link is a basic diagram. Do I use connection A or connection B? (i.e. BEFORE or AFTER the cable box)
Any advice is appreciated.
Your cable box is a TV tuner. Your TV tuner card is a TV tuner. You don’t want to plug one tuner into another, so you should use connection B.
Thank you Palooka.
The only problem is if your cable box is not just being a tuner, but also handles digital to analog signal conversion, because your PC tuner card won’t do that. If your cable company has mainly or totally digital channels, then bypassing the cable box will give you only a basic subset of channels in your PC - or maybe none at all.
So you might have to use connection A and leave your PC tuner card on a fixed channel (probably 3?). Then of course you can’t use software to change the tuner card channel. You have to manually change the cable box channel with a remote control or use an IR blaster setup.
And thank you too, W0X0F.
If you hook it up to your cable box (say cause your carrier has encrypted most channels so you can’t get anything without going through the box, like Comcast has) you’ll also need a controller to connect your tuner card to your cable box so your PC can change channels as necessary. It’s basically a cable that plugs into a usb port (or your tuner card, if it supports it) on one end and is secured over your cable boxes infrared receiver on the other. If you search for a “media center kit” you should be able to find one for under $50.
And thank you as well dstarfire. <sigh> I liked it better after Palooka’s answer…I DO indeed have Comcast and I was hoping WMC would sort out the rest. I guess I’ll see.