Why even use a TV tunercard?

[Ni3ls]

Hi,

I live in Denmark in a small town withouth any possibility for Cable TV (ever?)

I have a nice little MediaCenter based on a custom cabinet and an 2,8GHz P4 with a gig of RAM. All running very smoothly.

On my labtop (for travelling) I enjoy using a Pinnacle PC-TV USB2 unit, nice, handy and relatively stable (value/money). I bought this a year ago, today I think I would have bought something else though as the software is way to closed!

Now for my question:
All my channels at home are received through my Sat receiver as all terristic channels now are available as Digital broadcasts and the rest is provided by the satellite!

This means that I just turn on my TV and have to do all and any channel selections on the Sat-box - there is absolutely NO way i can see around this as a build in Sat-receiver seem unable to read decoding information from the Conax card provided by my distributor of Sat channels.

Now I am wondering:
Why even buy an analogue PCI card for my "Mediacenter" as all I really need is a Hardware based MPEG2 SVHS IN card for recording the signal from the Sat-box.....

Does anyone have any ideas for an ideal solution together with GBPVR?

I find the feature of being able to broadcast the signal using my LAN and a player on my Labtop (in my office) at home irresistible and would love a good solution for this.

Any advice / hints are very welcome before I rush out and invest a lot of money in some hardware I really do not need (Hauppage PVR-150) - or do I _really_ need to own one of these?

Thanx in advance.

/Niels

[sub]

Now I am wondering:
Why even buy an analogue PCI card for my "Mediacenter" as all I really need is a Hardware based MPEG2 SVHS IN card for recording the signal from the Sat-box.....

True - that is all you need, but no one builds one of these cards without a tuner. It probably costs them a $1 to add the tuner to the card, and it means it can be sold much wider range of potential customers. Does it really bother you if you buy a device that has a tuner which are not using?

Any advice / hints are very welcome before I rush out and invest a lot of money in some hardware I really do not need (Hauppage PVR-150) - or do I _really_ need to own one of these?

I would buy the PVR150.

[nkh]

The Plextor PX-M402U USB thing is supported in GBpvr, but it's more expensive than a PVR150... (680dkk for the Plextor, 654dkk for the Hauppauge card).

I got streaming from a computer with a PVR350 to my laptop working. Even over a slow wifi connection (802.11b). But it's outside GBpvr and it's not easy to use
If you have a faster home network then it should be possible to make a client setup of GBpvr on the laptop like in this thread. You can see my difficult and not very elegant solution here (in danish).

[Necro]

You can also use VLC (VideoLanClient? google for it) and the web interface. That's what I setup in my bedroom so the wife can look at videos we record in there (one bedroom apt, my computer - and therefore my WoW playing - occurs in the living room area...hehe).

It's not 'perfect' but it's close.

[valkokir]

Just wondering if the origianl poster knows about using an ir blaster to change the channel on his Sat. box. The way it's worded makes me wonder if he knows about that option. With that said I know there are media center combos out there that include a PVR-150, a remote and an IR blaster.

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_...pfp=SEARCH

I'm guessing CompUSA doesn't ship to small towns in Denmark, but it's just an example. (plus it's a good deal)