(Continued....)

PC-TV AS A COMPONENT BOX

If you can think of the PC-TV as a central audio-video component in something like a standard audio-video system in your wall cabinet, then you should understand how you can hook up just about anything to your PC-TV. I've done this with external devices such as set-top boxes, VCRs, and DVD players etc. where I set the TV on the PC to video-in and then turning on the VCR / DVD / set-top box / etc. and using the device's remote to control the external device. And this is just like if you were setting up an audio-video entertainment system in your home with multiple components but you are also hooking up a PC-TV box to your system in addition to your other electronic components. (footnote 1) So let's take a typical connection question that I may receive about, say, getting satellite TV on a PC: (There are satellite TV cards such as the SkyMedia-200 DVB Satellite Data/TV card, the Hauppauge WinTV DVB-s satellite TV card, the Hauppauge WinTV Nova satellite TV card, and the Hauppauge WinTV Nexus satellite TV card which are cards originally developed for satellite TV providers in the UK and other European countries -- but you may have to really search for those and any other satellite TV cards for the PC since you will most likely not find them in retail stores. For those folks in the US, I haven't heard of any specific TV card that works directly to receive DirecTV or DISH satellite TV broadcasts without the satellite receiver set-top box -- the problem is that you need the decoder and I don't think DirecTV or DISH want to let PC users have direct access to a decoder on a PC. The best solution appears to be getting a regular TV Tuner card and simply hooking it up to a satellite receiver box where the box does the decoding. You can also click here for another note from Ruel on satellite TV and PC-TV cards.) Now for the typical satellite TV situation for regular PC-TV cards, an easy conventional installation to consider is getting a regular TV Tuner card and then connecting the satellite TV set-top box to the PC but through the TV tuner card -- just as you would connect the satellite box to a regular TV. For instance, if you subscribe to Dish / DirecTV satellite television, then you would hook up your official Dish / DirecTV satellite television set-top box to the PC through the TV Tuner card. But you would have to control the TV through the box and not the PC -- i.e., you use the box's remote control and not your PC's keyboard to change the channels -- unless your PC-TV Tuner card has an IR Blaster cable for controlling the box such as the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card does have for controlling such boxes (both cable and satellite boxes).

Gemstar GUIDEplus+ television show listings on a PC-TV
with the TV window showing a couch potato watching TV
(You can click here for an automatic GUIDEplus+ updater)

As for output from a PC to a conventional TV or even to a big-screen TV, you can use a PC-to-TV connection such as using a PC-to-TV Scan Converter or a video card with the TV OUT port. And look at the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon cards which each have the TV Tuner, video card, and TV OUT built into that all-in-one line of cards -- also, ATI is packaging the Gemstar GUIDEplus+ Interactive Program Guide (IPG), also known as an Enhanced Program Guide (EPG), with their ATI line of TV cards to provide an onscreen "TV Guide" schedule for changing TV channels on your PC-TV. (If you don't have an ATI card, or don't want to get one, but want some sort of IPG / EPG for your PC-TV system, then get DigiGuide which has gone international with television listings for the United Kingdom, Ireland, United States, Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere.) And also look at the Matrox Marvel eTV card which also has the TV Tuner, video card, and TV OUT built into that card. You can click here to check out the ATI cards, the Matrox card, as well as other TV Tuner cards.

DigiGuide television show listings on a PC-TV.
DigiGuide is using a custom Kiosk_Like color
scheme to display larger fonts on the screen.

As for simply watching TV on the PC with the PC monitor, well, needless to say the bigger the better like a 19" or larger PC monitor -- or the biggest one you can afford. And since you are using a PC, you would have your other PC functions in addition to your resizeable TV window at your fingertips.

YOU CAN PUT YOUR PC-TV
IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR HOME
ENTERTAINMENT CENTER

One type of "wired" connection you may be interested in would involve directly connecting your PC-TV system to an actual TV set using some sort of PC-to-TV connection. This could require that you either: (1) connect to a digital TV set using a VGA connection or a VGA-to-component connection; (2) connect from your VGA port to a PC-to-TV Scan Converter and then connect to a TV set; or (3) use a video card with a TV OUT port to connect to a TV set. This would be in addition to having a TV Tuner card installed on your PC. You should be able hook up your VCR (or DVD player) to your TV Tuner card on your PC-TV via a cable connecting from the VCR (or the DVD player) to the input on the TV Tuner card -- and then a cable would go from the PC to the TV set. (As for your antenna or your cable TV, you could use a coax cable connection in a chain-linked manner where the VCR would be connected to your TV antenna or to cable TV via the antenna-in connection on the VCR and feeding the regular TV reception signal to the TV Tuner card -- if you have a VCR hooked up to a regular TV set with the antenna or cable TV hooked up to the VCR, then you should understand this part with the typical chain-linked connection). Click here for more information about these PC-to-TV connections.

For a very simple "wired" connection that you can try yourself using your TV Tuner card (without using any PC-to-TV connections), there is a simple PC-monitor-and-TV-set "dual screen" set-up using a VCR (or DVD player) as the common connection point: Place your VCR (or DVD player) next to your PC-TV and connect the VCR's (or DVD player's) video and sound outputs to the inputs on the TV tuner card on your PC using either a S-Video cable or regular audio-video cables, and then connect a coax cable from the VCR's (or DVD player's) antenna-out to the TV set. Or you can use a coax splitter to make your connections from the VCR with the coax cable connecting via the coax splitter to both the TV Tuner card and to the TV set. If you use the coax splitter going from the VCR to a TV Tuner card and to a TV set, then you can use RCA cables to connect from the VCR to a second TV Tuner card on the PC which is what I currently have as a connection to the VCR with my ATI TV Wonder card having the coax cable connection from the VCR and my Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card having the RCA cable connection from the VCR (and a S-Video connection from the DVD player going into the S-Video input on the ATI TV Wonder unless I want it to go to the Creative Video Blaster Digital VCR card). So, the VCR and/or DVD player can have multiple connections with one connection going straight to the PC and the other connection going straight to the TV set (you will only need a regular TV Tuner card on the PC to take in the VCR's signal without the need for a TV OUT port on your video card). That way you can watch whatever movie you have in the VCR or DVD player on both the PC and the regular TV set at the same time -- and you can flip through regular TV channels on the PC-TV while watching the movie on the TV set or vice versa. You may not have the regular TV set on all the time, but this type of set up can be convenient if you watch a lot of TV. You may have to move the coax cable away from your PC / monitor to prevent any interference showing up on the TV set -- or you may have to move your TV set far away from your PC. This is one set-up that I can use for watching movies on my PC-TV where I have almost everything at my fingertips -- just pop in a movie and I'm watching the movie on my PC-TV using this easy-to-use "dual screen" set-up.

One other set-up that I've been able to do would result in something of a "triple-screen" set-up involving the PC-TV, the VCR (and DVD player), the TV set, and a wireless transmitter. Well, you could say there could be more than triple screens if you include all of the other old TV sets in the house. I have a "wireless" Nippon Video Sender in-house transmitter hooked up to the VCR, and the DVD player using a sphagetti of splitter cables, so I can continue watching whatever videotape movie or DVD movie I may be watching on the PC-TV (via the direct hookups to the PC from the VCR and the DVD player) when I walk over to the kitchen and I flip on the old little TV set in the kitchen as I'm getting a snack to munch on -- I just switch on a particular channel on the kitchen TV and I'm watching the movie. So, the VCR and the DVD player are connected to the PC-TV via S-Video and A/V cables connected to the TV Tuner card. And the transmitter is connected to the VCR and the DVD player to transmit to TV sets throughout the house. (You can imagine the sphagetti of cables hooking everything together.) With the Nippon Video Sender, the rest of the family in the house could also watch the same movie that may be playing. FYI, the Nippon Video Sender is a little black box with a pull-up antenna and works best with TV sets that have the old-style circular channel dials or that have some sort of manual channel fine-tuning adjustment. Technically, the Nippon Video Sender is a "UHF modulator transmitter" device (also "RF UHF modulator") and using it is like having your own little TV broadcast station in the house because it could send its signal within a few hundred feet to any old-style TV set in the house without requiring receiver units at the TV sets -- just change the channel.

There are also UHF modulators that don't use a RF antenna / transmitter and that instead can be used via standard coaxial cable throughout your home to send the signal through the cable to other TV sets in your home. You can do some fancy stuff with a UHF modulator system (aka Channel Modulator and Video Modulator) particularly with one that can handle multiple "channels." For instance, you could try connecting a VCR, a DVD player, and a PC-TV system as separate feeds on additional different "channels" via the UHF modulator system. You could set those "channels" to be seen on unused cable TV channels where you can have something like a Channel Sat box 1, Channel Sat box 2, Channel VCR, Channel DVD, Channel PVR, or Channel PCTV, etc. This type of arrangement would be similar to what you may find in hotels and motels that provide closed circuit TV channels with movies and other TV content to guests. Of course, you can also have a simple single "channel" setup with a UHF modulator. FYI, UHF modulators and RF UHF modulator transmitters were first developed sometime in the 1970s and 1980s long before networking and wireless were a twinkling in the eyes of the folks in the PC high-tech world.

Next for wireless, if you have more of the modern TV sets (without the old-style circular channel dials) in your home, then you can try setting up a "wireless" in-the-home "broadcast" capability directly to your PC using the new 2.4 GHz video sender units which would require a receiver unit for each TV set that is to receive your in-house broadcast signal *from* your PC-TV system. One such product that you can hook up directly to your PC's VGA port is the Grandtec Ultimate Wireless PC-to-TV Converter (pictured above) which comes with the transmitter and a receiver unit. You should be able to use the 2.4 GHz video sender-receiver units with any TV set whether new or old. Unless if you want to use long cable connections (which people actually do use by stringing cable and wire between rooms or through a hole in the wall), you can try using a video wireless connection by putting the transmitter with your PC-TV in one room of the house and putting a receiver with your home audio-video entertainment system in another part of the house. The new 2.4 GHz video sender units are suppose to provide better picture and audio with stereo sound.

Related to this is the problem of getting cable TV to an upstairs PC-TV system when the cable television connection is downstairs. B.P. sent in an email with this question: "I would like to have 'TV' capability in the upstairs computer without running a new coax cable to the upstairs. Is there a way to put a PC-TV Tuner card in the upstairs computer and somehow getting the cable TV signal to it without running coax?" Well, what you could try doing is use wireless connection with a different wireless video system transmitter (such as the one pictured immediately above this paragraph) connected to a VCR which would be hooked up to the cable television connection downstairs and then have the wireless video receiver connected to the PC-TV (or for that matter to a regular TV) upstairs. You would have to hook up the wireless receiver to the video and audio inputs on the TV Tuner card on the PC upstairs and then set the TV Tuner card to Video In to watch the live TV signal from the wireless receiver. This type of setup would be perfect if you have a spare VCR -- just get a splitter to hook up the old VCR to the cable connection downstairs. For instance, if you are like me, you may have one or two old VCRs sitting around collecting dust that can not play videotapes anymore but which can still get TV and would be perfect for this type of no-stringing-coax-to-the-upstairs wireless video transmission situation.

And with the right wireless video transmitter, you should ALSO be able to use a remote control upstairs to control your audio-video electronics equipment downstairs (or in a different part of your home) -- such as changing the live TV channels on the VCR source downstairs in the above paragraph's no-upstairs-cable-connection situation. OR you may want to consider a separate wireless extender like a remote control IR repeater or an infrared remote extender which you should be able to use with almost any remote control device whether for a VCR, DVD player, cable / satellite set-top box, or, in a different setup, you can even try a remote control that you may have for your PC system.

CONNECTING YOUR PC-TV
TO YOUR HOME ETHERNET
LOCAL AREA NETWORK VIA A
"NETWORKED ENTERTAINMENT
GATEWAY" DEVICE

For those folks who have PC local area networks and ethernet connections in their homes connecting all of the home PCs, then you can have your PC-TV HTPC system be the media center server hub containing all of your TV video recordings in your home and from which you can access all of your video files to watch at anytime you want and also from anywhere in your home if you network your system to other PCs and TVs in your home such as via home network gateway extender connections with 802.11g or 802.11b wireless connections from your system to other PCs and TVs in the home.

You can put all of your TV video files in a playlist to continuously
play hours & hours of videos off of your PC-TV's harddrive. Here,
Windows Media Player has a playlist of videos on the right panel.
Windows Media Player can also let you watch in fullscreen mode.

So if you have a network in your home connecting all of the PCs in your home, you may simply want to try playing the video files from a shared folder on your PC-TV system. Or you may simply want to copy files for the TV recordings you want to watch from the PC-TV to other PCs in the home and then play them in a media player such as using Windows Media Player (or using PowerDVD or WinDVD) that you may have on the other PCs in the home.

Windows Media Player is using a "QuickSilver" skin
and is playing a WMV file recording of a TV show.

As for connecting your PC-TV HTPC system via your PC local area network to TV sets in the home, you may also want to look at the Hauppauge MediaMVP and PRISMIQ MediaPlayer "networked entertainment gateway" devices which will let you send MPEG videos, MP3 music, and show off JPG and GIF pictures from a PC in one room to a TV set in another room via the home local area network. Both come with remote controls and look like they are easy to use.

The Hauppauge MediaMVP (the "MVP" in MediaMVP stands for Music, Video, Pictures) is the cheaper of these two ethernet-type "networked entertainment gateway devices" with a MSRP of $99 and should be available towards the end of September 2003. The PRISMIQ MediaPlayer has a more expensive MSRP of $249.95 and is available now. The Hauppauge MediaMVP supports MPEG1 and MPEG2 for video, MP3 for music, and GIF and JPG for pictures. The PRISMIQ MediaPlayer supports MPEG1, MPEG2, and MPEG4 for video, MP3 for music (plus Shoutcast and WMA internet radio), and JPG and GIF for pictures. The Hauppauge MediaMVP and the PRISMIQ MediaPlayer are suppose to now have DivX support also, but they do not have WMV (Windows Media Video) support yet. (In case you don't know, DivX makes MPEG video files much smaller in size while retaining the quality of the original video -- like how MP3 compresses music files.) If you get one of these "networked entertainment gateway" devices, you may want to decide whether to keep your videos in the MPEG2 video format or in DivX or in WMV on a large harddrive. Whatever you decide as to the video file format that you may want to use (I use all three formats), that also means that you should get the largest video harddrive that you can afford for storing your saved video files on your PC-TV system.

Another network entertainment gateway device worth checking out is the Gateway Connected DVD Player (there is a model 220 and a model 320) which can play regular DVD movies and also wirelessly connect with a PC via an 802.11g wireless connection to play the video files, including MPEG2 and DivX video files, as well as MP3 music files, from your home-built PC-TV HTPC system's harddrive. The Gateway Connected DVD Player comes with an 802.11g wireless card to install in the PC so that this DVD player (connected to your living room TV set) can connect wirelessly with your PC-TV system for watching your video recordings. If you get the Gateway Connected DVD Player, then be sure to get the firmware update to ensure that the Gateway Connected DVD Player is updated with the DivX-compatibility feature.

SETUP A LOCAL AREA NETWORK
IN YOUR HOME TO CONNECT YOUR
FAMILY'S COMPUTERS TOGETHER
SO YOU CAN SHARE YOUR PERSONAL
RECORDINGS WITH THE REST OF
YOUR FAMILY IN YOUR HOME

Another alternative is to simply put a "living room PC" of some sort in the living room, then connect that PC via your wired or wireless 802.11b or 802.11g home local area network to your PC-TV that may be recording TV shows in another room, connect the "living room PC" to the TV in the living room, and then share your video files from the PC-TV in the other room with the "living room PC" in the living room to be seen on the TV set in the living room by either streaming the video files from your PC-TV hub to your other PCs in the home or by simply copying your video files from the PC-TV hub to the other PCs in the home.

One option is to set up an 802.11b or 802.11g local area network
in your home connecting your PC-TV to your PCs and Macs in
the home (even including a PC in the living room connected
to the living room TV) & share your personal video recordings
with the rest of your family on the other PCs in your home.

In a basic home network arrangement that hooks up PCs in the home, I've also found that the eMac makes for a nice looking "video player" that looks a lot like a TV set and on which you can simply insert DVDs to play or on which you can copy your DivX recordings from your home's main PC-TV hub to play on the eMac in full-screen mode which would be similar to watching on a bedroom TV. You can also look at the new Apple flatscreen iMacs and see how you can possibly use a Mac for media and video entertainment in the home. I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple to eventually come out with a new Apple Mac TV that had PVR media center-like television recording capabilities. (FYI, Apple previously had a Mac TV for watching live TV in 1992.)

This is an Apple eMac playing a DivX recording
in fullscreen mode -- just like watching TV in the
home. You can share your video recordings on
your family's home computers in your home.

CAN'T SET UP A NETWORK
IN YOUR HOME, THEN GET
A DIVX-COMPATIBLE DVD PLAYER
TO PLAY DIVX VIDEOS FILES OFF
OF YOUR CD-R OR DVD-R DISCS

If you don't want to set up a wired or wireless network in your home, you can always use the "sneaker net" option where you simply burn your video recordings to CDs or DVDs (DivX recordings should fit nicely on CD-Rs) and then put on your sneakers so that you yourself can then physically run from your PC-TV to the other PCs in your home to play your videos on the other PCs.

For the television set in the living room, you can now get a DivX-compatible DVD player such as the Philips DVP642 Progressive-Scan DVD Player which will play DivX video files that you have burned onto CD-R and DVD-R discs. Normally, DVD players that you attach to TV sets could only play DVD movie discs but not data CD-R discs or data DVD-R discs that have DivX files. However, now, there are new DVD players, again such as the Philips DVP642 Progressive-Scan DVD Player, that are becoming available that can play DivX video files in addition to playing the DVD movies that you may rent from the Blockbuster rental store.

YOU CAN CONNECT YOUR PC-TV
TO JUST ABOUT ALMOST ANYTHING

So, if you are good at hooking up combinations of cables between and among audio-video components, then you could most likely hook up your PC-TV to almost anything such as hooking up a DVD player, VCR, videogame console such as a Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, or Sega , or to a TiVo, UltimateTV, WebTV, MSNTV, AOLTV, whatever-other-interactive-box, satellite TV box, digital cable TV box, etc. in multiple-chain-linked "wired" combinations as well as "wireless" connections using a video sender unit connected to your overall home entertainment system with your PC-TV in the middle of it all. You can click here for more information about cables, wires, jacks, and connecting your PC-TV to different connections such as to your VCR, DVD player, your antenna, cable TV, digital TV set-top box, etc.

(Continued: More on telewebbing....)

¹   On a related note, if you want to, you could paint your PC's case to try to match your other home audio-video consoles and components. If you have a typical PC, it is probably beige in color. However, audio-video consoles and components are typically black or dark grey in color. If you want to paint your PC's case, you do so at your own risk. So, if you do paint your case, be prepared to take your time and be careful about what you are doing so you can have a better chance of getting a good paint job done. You can click here and here for tips on painting PC cases.

NOTICE: Ruel provides many free links seen on these pages. If you buy anything, your purchases would be from a linked third-party website(s). The links are for your convenience since everyone asks for suggestions about products. The products should come with their own guarantees and warranties. As for return policies, the various online vendors who are linked should have return policies -- look at the specific vendor information carefully and decide for yourself what card, device, or other product you may want to get.