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TV tuner card

 
TV Tuner Card

 
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TV tuner card
 
 
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A TV tuner card is a computer component
Electronic component

An electronic component is a basic Electronics element usually packaged in a discrete form with two or more connecting leads or metallic pads....
 that allows television
Television

Television is a widely used telecommunication mass-media for transmitting and receiving moving , either monochrome or color, usually accompanied by sound....
 signals to be received by a computer
Computer

A computer is a machine that manipulates Data according to a list of Code .The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century , although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed earlier....
. Most TV tuners also function as video capture cards
Video processing expansion card

A video processing expansion card is a computer expansion card that allows a computer to receive television signals, record video, and/or playback video content....
, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk
Hard disk

A hard disk drive , commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk, or fixed disk drive, is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating hard disk platters with magnetic surfaces....
.

uners are available in a number of different interfaces: as PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect

The PCI Local Bus , or Conventional PCI, is a computer bus for attaching computer hardware in a computer. These devices can take either the form of an integrated circuit fitted onto the motherboard itself, called a planar device in the PCI specification or an expansion card that fits into a socket....
 bus expansion card
Expansion card

An expansion card in computing is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an expansion slot of a computer motherboard to add additional functionality to a computer system....
, PCI Express
PCI Express

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI Local Bus, PCI-X, and Accelerated Graphics Port standards....
 (PCIe) bus, PCMCIA
PC card

In computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard were defined and developed by a group of industry-leading companies called the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association ....
, Mini PCI Express
PCI Express

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI Local Bus, PCI-X, and Accelerated Graphics Port standards....
, PCMCIA Express
ExpressCard

ExpressCard is a hardware standard replacing PC cards , both developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association . The host device supports both PCI Express and USB 2.0 connectivity through the ExpressCard slot, and each card uses whichever the designer feels most appropriate to the task....
 or USB
Universal Serial Bus

In information technology, Universal Serial Bus is a Serial communications computer bus standard to electrical connector devices to a host computer....
 devices.






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Hauppauge Win Tv Karte
A TV tuner card is a computer component
Electronic component

An electronic component is a basic Electronics element usually packaged in a discrete form with two or more connecting leads or metallic pads....
 that allows television
Television

Television is a widely used telecommunication mass-media for transmitting and receiving moving , either monochrome or color, usually accompanied by sound....
 signals to be received by a computer
Computer

A computer is a machine that manipulates Data according to a list of Code .The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century , although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed earlier....
. Most TV tuners also function as video capture cards
Video processing expansion card

A video processing expansion card is a computer expansion card that allows a computer to receive television signals, record video, and/or playback video content....
, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk
Hard disk

A hard disk drive , commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk, or fixed disk drive, is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating hard disk platters with magnetic surfaces....
.

Variants

Kncone Tv Station Dvbs2 Plus Pci Card Front 0595 By Hdtvtotaldotcom
TV tuners are available in a number of different interfaces: as PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect

The PCI Local Bus , or Conventional PCI, is a computer bus for attaching computer hardware in a computer. These devices can take either the form of an integrated circuit fitted onto the motherboard itself, called a planar device in the PCI specification or an expansion card that fits into a socket....
 bus expansion card
Expansion card

An expansion card in computing is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an expansion slot of a computer motherboard to add additional functionality to a computer system....
, PCI Express
PCI Express

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI Local Bus, PCI-X, and Accelerated Graphics Port standards....
 (PCIe) bus, PCMCIA
PC card

In computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard were defined and developed by a group of industry-leading companies called the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association ....
, Mini PCI Express
PCI Express

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI Local Bus, PCI-X, and Accelerated Graphics Port standards....
, PCMCIA Express
ExpressCard

ExpressCard is a hardware standard replacing PC cards , both developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association . The host device supports both PCI Express and USB 2.0 connectivity through the ExpressCard slot, and each card uses whichever the designer feels most appropriate to the task....
 or USB
Universal Serial Bus

In information technology, Universal Serial Bus is a Serial communications computer bus standard to electrical connector devices to a host computer....
 devices. Ethernet
Ethernet

Ethernet is a family of Data frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks . The name comes from the physical concept of the Luminiferous aether....
-connected devices also exist () and (). In addition, some video card
Video card

A video card, also known as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, or graphics card, is an expansion card whose function is to generate and output images to a display....
s double as TV tuners, notably the ATI
ATI Technologies

ATI Technologies Inc. was a major designer and supplier of graphics processing units and motherboard chipsets. In 2006, the company was acquired by Advanced Micro Devices and was renamed the AMD Graphics Product Group, although the ATI brand was retained for graphics cards....
 All-In-Wonder series. The card contains a tuner
Tuner (radio)

A tuner is an adjustable device which passes one radio frequency, or band of frequencies, and excludes others, by using electrical resonance. A tuner performs the process of selecting the desired signal but its output is not directly usable and must be sent to another device....
 and an analog-to-digital converter
Analog-to-digital converter

An analog-to-digital converter is a device which converts continuous signal to Discrete signal digital numbers. The reverse operation is performed by a digital-to-analog converter ....
 (collectively known as the analog front end) along with demodulation and interface logic. Some very cheap cards lack an onboard processor and, like a Winmodem
Softmodem

A Softmodem, or software modem, is a modem with minimal hardware capacities, designed to use a host computer's resources to perform most of the tasks performed by dedicated hardware in a traditional modem....
, rely on the system's CPU for demodulation.

There are currently four kinds of tuner card on the market:

Analog TV
Analog television

Analog television encodes television picture and sound information and transmits it as an analog signal: one in which the message conveyed by the broadcast Signal is a function of deliberate variations in the amplitude and/or frequency of the signal....
 tuners


Cheaper models output a raw video stream, suitable for real-time viewing but ideally requiring some sort of compression if it is to be recorded. More expensive models encode the signal to Motion JPEG or MPEG
Moving Picture Experts Group

Moving Picture Experts Group was formed by the International Organization for Standardization to set standards for audio compression and video compression and transmission....
, relieving the main CPU of this load. Many cards also have analog input (composite video
Composite video

Composite video is the format of an analog television signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulation onto an Radio Frequency carrier wave....
 or S-Video
S-Video

Separate Video, more commonly known as S-Video, and sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Super Video" and also known as Y/C, is an analog signal video signal that carries the video data as two separate signals, lumen and chroma ....
) and many also provide FM radio reception.

Digital TV
Digital television

Digital television is the sending and receiving of moving images and sound by Discrete signal signals, in contrast to the Analog television used by analog TV....
 tuners


Digital TV is broadcasted as an MPEG-2
MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of Lossy compression video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission bandwidth....
 stream, so no encoder is necessary; instead, the digital cards either provide the whole MPEG transport stream or extract the individual (audio and video) elementary stream
Elementary stream

An elementary stream as defined by MPEG communication protocol is usually the output of an audio or video encoder. ES contains only one kind of data, e.g....
s.

Hybrid tuners


A hybrid tuner has one tuner that can be configured to act as an analog tuner or a digital tuner. Switching in between the systems is fairly easy, but can not be done immediately. The card operates as a digital tuner or an analog tuner until reconfigured.

Combo tuners


This is similar to a hybrid tuner, except there are two separate tuners on the card. One can watch analog while recording digital, or vice versa. The card operates as an analog tuner and a digital tuner simultaneously. The advantages over two separate cards are cost and utilization of expansion slots in the computer. As many regions around the world convert from analog to digital broadcasts, these tuners are gaining popularity.

Like the analog cards, the Hybrid and Combo tuners can have specialized chips on the tuner card to perform the encoding, or leave this task to the CPU. The tuner cards with this 'hardware encoding' are generally thought of as being higher quality. Small USB tuner sticks have become more popular in 2006 and 2007 and are expected to increase in popularity. These small tuners generally do not have hardware encoding due to size and heat constraints.

While most TV tuners are limited to the radio frequencies and video
Video

Video is the technology of electronics Videography, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing Scene in motion....
 format
Format

:For help on formatting Wikipedia articles, see...
s used in the country of sale, many TV tuners used in computers use DSP
Digital signal processing

Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of the signal s by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals....
, so a firmware
Firmware

Firmware is a term sometimes used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples range from end user products such as remote controls or calculators, via computer parts and devices like harddisks, keyboard s, TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instr...
 upgrade is often all that's necessary to change the supported video format. Many newer TV tuners have flash memory
Flash memory

Flash memory is a non-volatile memory computer storage that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It is a technology that is primarily used in memory cards and USB flash drives for general storage and transfer of data between computers and other digital products....
 big enough to hold the firmwares for decoding several different video formats, making it possible to use the tuner in many countries without having to flash the firmware. However, while it is generally possible to flash a card from one analog format to another due to the similarities, it is generally not possible to flash a card from one digital format to another due to differences in decode logic necessary.

Many TV tuners can function as FM radio
FM broadcasting

FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology invented by Edwin Howard Armstrong that uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio....
s; this is because there are similarities between broadcast television and FM radio. The FM radio spectrum is close to (or even inside) that used by VHF
Very high frequency

VHF is the radio frequency range from 30 megahertz to 300 megahertz. Frequencies immediately below VHF are denoted High frequency , and the next higher frequencies are known as Ultra high frequency ....
 terrestrial TV broadcasts. And many broadcast television systems around the world use FM audio. So listening to an FM radio station is simply a case of configuring existing hardware.

Manufacturers


See also

  • Frame grabber
    Frame grabber

    A frame grabber is an electronic device that captures individual, digital still frames from an analog video signal or a digital video stream. It is usually employed as a component of a computer vision system, in which video frames are captured in digital form and then displayed, stored or transmitted in raw or compressed digital form....