So I plan on buying a widescreen for my (new) computer this weekend.
What I want to know is, what do I need in order to hook up my cable tv to the same monitor.
Also, is there any reason why I shouldn’t do this?
FWIW, I’ll be watching quite a bit of TV on said monitor.
What can I expect to spend on, not the monitor, but the hardware/software to get me set-up?
What OS do you have? If you have vista home premium or ultimate you’re set in terms of software. If you have XP either upgrade to vista or check out sage TV or beyond TV for DVR software solutions. Vista home Premium OEM version will run you about $100, the other DVR software packages will run you about $50-$80.
In terms of hardware we need to know what kind of TV hookup you have in mind? You said cable - is that basic analog cable? Is it digital cable? Is it clear QAM cable? Do you want to hook up an antenna for free over the air HD channels?
Essentially you’ll need some kind of tuner. They cost anywhere from $50 to $300 depending on what you want.
Personally I use three tuners: 1 HomerunHD (2x digital QAM tuners) and 1 Hauppauge 1600 tuner (1 x analog cable). I get all my local HD programming as well as my basic cable programming in digital quality (thanks to QAM) through my cable company, and I also get the basic cable channels in analog (I do this mostly to get a few channels that I don’t get reliably in QAM and in case my SO wants to record a tv show where Hd or digital quality is not essential (PBS shows mostly). So I can record three different shows at the same time, or record two and time shift one, etc. How important is this ability to you? It will determine the number of tuners you’ll need.
I have digital cable and Windows Vista home premium.
Will I have to turn my computer on in order for the TV to work?
(I’m concerned about energy consumption.)
Thanks for the input BTW.
It sounds like you just want to hook your digital cable box straight to the new monitor (rather than using the computer to capture and play back TV). How you do it will depend on what output your digital cable box has and what inputs your monitor has. Off the top of my head, you might have HDMI out on the cable box which might be converted to DVI into the monitor; there is a content protection scheme (HDCP) that might come into play though. If you post info about your cable box and new monitor, hopefully there’s something that can work.
ETA: You’ll have to work out something with the sound from the cable box as well. Maybe you already have a receiver or the new monitor has built in speakers?
Right, if all you want to do is to run your digital cable box through to your monitor, you can do that without bothering to go through the computer as Aparklo outlines above.