RE: TV tuner cards

Will PCI/PCIe cards that are cable-TV ready also work on satellite TV (i.e. DirectTV), or does this require something different?

 

I think better start looking information about that in FTA forums, Google is your friend here.

 

I cant say for sure,but I would make an educated guess that they cant. Sat receivers have 2 way coms with the dish. They feed a voltage back up the line to polarize the LNB on the dish. This is not required with cable. I suppose that theoretically a manufacturer could make a card that supports both but you would have to specify in the settings what type of receiver you wish to use.

Hope this helps

 

If you're asking can a TV tuner card replace your Satellite box or add another receiver to it then no. It's less about being able too and more about Satellite providers trying to keep control over who receives what content. If you're asking if you can take your Satellite box and have that record to your computer for whatever other reason then yes, there are other capture cards that can do that.

http://store.hauppauge.com/hardware2.asp?product=hvr1800 Here's just one example showing the necessary bits to work. You'll see a TV tuner card with two wires coming out of it and two connections for cable wires. Those first two wires are an IR remote reciever and an "IR Blaster". The receiver is so that you can use the provided remote control without having to be in front of your TV. The blaster is taped over the IR receiver of your satellite box to tell the sat box to change channels, turn on/off, etc.... You'd then take the regular out from the sat box and route it to your TV tuner card in your computer. If you wanted to also watch what was coming out of the box on a regular TV you'd have to split the line from the sat box, there is no TV out on the TV tuner card.