Television via USB

[zoidberg]

Apparently there is an external USB device that you can plug in to your PC, allowing you to watch TV on it? Anyone know whether they're any good? Do you need to put any kind of TV card in the PC as well?

Are you supposed to have a license for them?

>> Edited by zoidberg on Monday 20th March 14:38

[Plotloss]

Hauppage WinTV Nova-T USB

[TeamD]

zoidberg said:

Apparently there is an external USB device that you can plug in to your PC, allowing you to watch TV on it? Anyone know whether they're any good? Do you need to put any kind of TV card in the PC as well? Are you supposed to have a license for them? >> Edited by zoidberg on Monday 20th March 14:38

V-Gear Pocket DVB-T

Works ok, box is about the size of a pack of fags, I get the odd bit of breakup but that's probably due to a) The small antenna b) The amount of scaffolding and tall buildings around me. It's supposed to do TV recording aswell but I've never tried that function. Plugs into the USB port, nothing else required except for the software to be installed and tuned. Available from Maplin.

[sybaseian]

I have this connected to my PC for freeview and have also used it with a laptop. Just make sure that you use a proper external ariel connection rather the supplied one.

www.ultima.com.tw/ehtm/be121.htm

[wanty1974]

I run an EyeTV doobrey from Terratec on my Mac, although they do PC versions too. You do need a good external aerial and a licence if you don't have one for the premises where you're watching it...

The digital recorder works quite well, too...

[thegreenhell]

I have one of these

Freecom DVB-T TV Freeview USB Stick

As others have said it works best with a decent aerial, but it's dead easy to install and use. It picks up all of the Freeview channels and the native resolution is 1024x576 for 16:9 broadcasts.

The record/playback function works at the push of a button, it has a 7-day programme guide that you can select programmes to record from, and uses roughly 2 gigs of HD space per hour of recording.