Get digital TV on your PC
cnn.com
October 20, 1999
Web posted at: 11:53 a.m. EDT (1553 GMT)
by Cameron Crouch
(IDG) -- Buying an expensive high-definition
TV is not a practical way to check out the
handful of digital broadcasts available today.
For a few hundred dollars you can tune into
digital TV right on your PC.
Hauppauge Digital announced on Monday a
digital TV receiver board, WinTV-D. Available at BestBuy for $299, the
WinTV-D tuner board enables PCs to receive the full range of television
broadcasts, including digital and analog television, as well as high-speed data
transmissions.
"The WinTV-D is similar to our existing tuner cards," says Ken Plotkin, chief
executive officer of Hauppauge Digital. "The main difference is that we've
added a digital TV receiver in addition to the analog receiver."
Resembling the back of a TV set, the tuner has two coaxial connectors for
antennas -- one for cable TV and the other for a digital TV antenna. The
WinTV-D will receive any cable channel except pay-per-view. The tuner
offers Dolby Prologic surround sound from five speakers on the back.
Although the WinTV-D board has no real memory requirements, you do need
a system with a 90-MHz or faster Intel Pentium, a sound card, a VGA
monitor and VGA card, a cable television connection, and a digital TV
antenna.
The Advanced Television Systems Committee digital TV formats are
broadcast over airwaves, Plotkin says. "You can either use a rooftop satellite
antenna or a bow-tie antenna."
Background TV while you
compute
While you watch TV, the CPU isn't involved
in the process, Plotkin says. You can resize
the image so you can check your e-mail
while watching TV, or expand it to full size
for TV-like viewing.
When the WinTV board receives a digital
image, it manipulates the format and sends it
at a rate of 30 times per second over a PCI
bus into VGA memory for display on your
monitor. Most VGA monitors are inherently
high definition, Plotkin adds.
WinTV-D also requires a Microsoft Direct
Draw driver. It works with any graphics
card that supports Direct Draw, Plotkin says.
Hauppauge is not alone in the TV tuner card
space. Besides other standalone tuner cards,
graphics cards like the ATI All-in-Wonder
and Matrox's Marvel G200-TV include a TV
tuner. You replace your existing VGA card
in order to use them.
Currently, about 78 digital television stations
operate in the United States either as network or PBS affiliates. With the
FCC-mandated transition from analog to digital transmission (in major cities),
Hauppauge expects digital television and other types of broadcast to rise.
The other benefit of high-definition broadcasts is that the digital transmission
can be used to send data to consumers, "bringing TV and data together in the
same transmission," Plotkin adds.
For now, WinTV-D may enable your PC to give you a taste of high-definition
TV. And if you like it, you may want to consider a high-definition television or,
at least, a bigger monitor.
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