PC plus TV: entertainment revolution

By PETER GRIFFIN

Most people squeeze a fair bit of entertainment out of the PC these days - listening to music, playing games, surfing the web or streaming radio stations. Now the jump to using the PC as the ultimate entertainment device - the television - is easy.

With basic TV tuner cards costing $200 to $400, it is relatively cheap and a good way to save space in a study or bedroom by using one screen for TV viewing and computing.

We installed the relatively high-end PV256 PCI MPEG2 tuner card ($735 plus GST) from 3Demon on a Dell Pentium 4 running Windows XP. Hauling the top off the machine is the most arduous part of the installation. Find a free slot and ease the card in gently. Windows detected our TV tuner straight away and launched an installation wizard.

A reboot later, the software was talking to the tuner card, which we attached to a shonky pair of rabbit's ears to pick up the freely available channels. Connecting to a fixed aerial will give much better reception. Connect your tuner card to your sound card with the supplied cable and you have sound with your pictures.

From there on, it's just a matter of auto-scanning with the capture software which allows you to size the TV screen in a window or go full-screen on your computer monitor. The software will allow you to record programmes as mpeg files to your hard disk.

Still, you will be restricted to a 15- to-17-inch screen, not the best for viewing blockbusters.

With the tuner card installed, you can drag your PC into the lounge and connect it to the 29-inch for some decent viewing. This enables you to view programmes on the family TV and record the programmes to your PC hard drive.

A great piece of software called Showshifter allows you to change channels and set up your own programming guide, similar to Sky's.

TiVo and ReplayTV are two companies making inroads in this market, though neither product is available in New Zealand.

Owners of TiVo boxes in the US can programme their machines to start recording a certain channel at a certain time, much as you do now with your VCR. But the programmes are recorded digitally to a hard drive, typically 10 to 20GB in size, enough to store many hours.

No more rewinding and fast forwarding, or dirty tapes screwing up the heads of your video player, making the picture unbearable to watch. Going digital means the picture is better, and you can indulge in a spot of "time-shifting". Need to take a phone call during the 6pm news? Hit record on your TiVo box and start where you left off.

The growing use of TV tuner cards has even spawned a new pastime - telewebbing. Here you surf the web while you watch TV, great for multi-taskers. You can see the advantage for big sporting events. Have the Tri-Nations playing on one half of the screen with a website updating match statistics in the other half.

Fans of this type of thing have their own online community at ruel.net. The PV256 came with a remote control allowing channel changes without touching mouse or keyboard.

And the hardware requirements for TV tuner cards are not too onerous. A Pentium II 400MHz with at least 64MB of RAM and a spare PCI slot to house the tuner card should do fine.

ShowShifter

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