am looking for a tuner that will accept component cables from my cable box so i can watch/record the hdtv shows... but all i have found is free wave tuners.. which i dont care about

any sugestions?

ok i take it that eather there isnt one.... or i posted it in the wrong thread and no ones kind enough to give me that lil heads up... hehe or know one knows of one

are you talking about off air digital locals? if so you might try e-bay for a Voom satellite box. it has a good digital tuner, the satellite part wont work since Voom went bankrupt. but the tuners still work.

You're looking for the wrong thing. The set top cable box is the
tuner. What you need is a computer card that accepts component
video inputs. I am not that well versed in that so I can't tell you what,
if anything like that is available.

Cards like that are definitely available. You can choose from quite a selection including cards that are designed to accept signal inputs from Free Air transmissions, satellite and cable interfaces etc...Probably waht you will be looking for is a card that has a capture function built into it and also has an onboard MPEG2 encoder chip. The Haupaugge ( SP?) line is good and there are others if you want to play with the signal. Just make sure that whatever you buy is the right setting for your system ( NTSC, PAL etc..) and that it has an onboard encoder chip, that way it will offload the encoding and you can still have a usable computer.

Helpful?

Was going to look for an extra OTAtuner for cheap and didnt think of Voom recievers...WHat a catch!
They have S-Video out I think so I could use it on my old SD TV too... Maybe
Anyone know if that will output to SD through the S-Video?
Thanks Tescorp!

If you want a HD component input card for a PC, they are not that common, and are still expensive. It takes quite a bit of searching to even find one. I don't think the market is that big for them....yet.

Last week I discovered something really interesting while Googling for
something else.

Some(maybe most) cable providers send the local stations such as
NBC, CBS, etc in digital HD right along with the normal analog
cable. You just need a QAM tuner to grab them off the cable.
Only the unencrypted, aka clear channel HD signals are available
this way.

Before buying a QAM tuner it would be a good idea to check if
your provider does this. I found a local HDTV forum that had a
wealth of information.

i have comcast digital cable... using their hd set top box.. it has the component cable out's as well as the more common svideo/coaxal/composite out's. I want to simple take those hd cables and plug them into my computer so i can watch those chanals in hd... like scifi hbo discovery ... just want a capture card for this.. for ill still use the cable box it self to change channals

would need it to be ntsc for im here in the states

griff,

The Voom box has outputs for coax, component, composite, s-video, digital audio optical, and DVI. also has a USB output. you can use it on any analog TV, or any device that has these inputs. just make sure you get a box that has been activated.

... my cable box has usb on it as well.. is there some way to use that for streaming? always assumed it was meerly for burning recorded shows to dvd not nessisarly live broadcasts

Im a bit of a novice with this stuff, but the way I understand this, without investing a really healthy chunk of cash, you are limited to 480I for capture from most cards. Holo3D II with the HD-Aux board seems to be the way to go if you want to do that route.If you are okay with 480i then try this card. HDTV Component Input Card. This one will take composite input from a D-Sub15 adapter from composite. I have a feeling you might be in for some sticker shock here. I was.

From the little that I have researched on this topic, much of the technology that drives the HDTV recording cards for computers is a nitche market. Typically that means much higher pricetags for much lower quality equipment. You can compare that to the regular NTSC cable recording cards specifically from Hauppauge which tend to run from 60 to 150 depending on if you want one tuner, two, or a legacy card. These cards I know from experience will take a regular NTSC cable source and turn it out into a 720x480 resolution mpeg file. It does an absolutly fantastic job, but thats all it can do. The current DTV/HDTV standard isn't quite mainstream yet. Once it becomes mainstream and more people are interested in recording HDTV formats there will come a demand for HDTV cards. These cards will be able to take in a native 1080i or 720p record or even playback to and from your computer without using precious CPU cycles. Currently the only existing HDTV recording cards avaliable rob precious cycles. My personal opinion on these current cards is to stay far away until demand kicks up. The price will fall and the features will rise. Unless of course you require one of these cards now.

If you happen to be in the states, I know getting one of these cards does not guarentee you HDTV or DTV content over the cable wire. That depends on the good graces of your cable company weither or not they encrypt those channels and require a seperate decoder card to view it. Much like the descrambler boxes of olden times. As far as outside content such as a DVD player that outputs in HD format, you'd have no problem hooking that up. Or even a cable box that has component out, but I would be cautious if you intend on viewing cable on it.

TESCORP,
Thanks for the info you are the man.
As for anyone looking for an HDTV PC tuner. The Dvico Fusion 5 gold QAM is the ONLY tuner that does QAM abd OTA.
I own the Fusion 1 and Fusion 2 that had dual coax inputs they are awsome and I HIGHLY recommend it. It simply WORKS! You can caputer the signal into an MPEG2 stream and it has a small untillity to turn it into a DVD compliant 720*480 MPEG2. Or even Divx....
I bought mine from Digital Connection for $150 it includes a remote that is perfect for HTPCs. Turns you PC into an HDTV with my 21" monitor I got ture full HDTV reslolution. Now I just gotta put my PJ together.

The MIT MyHD-130 will also do QAM and OTA HD.