Thursday, September 1, 2011

How Can I Watch TV Shows On My Computer

By Coleen Kayne


Today's many technological advances have made it possible for us to watch our favorite television shows on our computer screen. Yes, modern technology has given birth to internet TV. Now you may ask: How can I watch TV shows on my computer? Well, you have to keep reading in order to find out.

One device that you can use in order to watch TV from your PC is known as the TV tuner card. A TV tuner card, which is a kind of television tuner that allows television signals to be received by a computer, may come in the form of an internal PCI card or an external USB box. Basically, there are two types of TV tuners - digital and analog.

A digital TV tuner card broadcasts the program in the MPEG2 format, and therefore eliminates the need for any encoder. It can either broadcast the whole program or separate the audio and video. These tuners can also rewind or fast-forward the program depending on what the users want. Some even allow the users to divide the computer screen so that they can watch more than one program all at the same time.

On the other hand, an analog TV tuner card outputs a raw video stream so that it is suitable for real-time viewing. However, if the video is to be recorded, some sort of compression is ideally required. Naturally, the analog type is cheaper as compared to digital TV tuners. But as mentioned, analog TV tuner cards cannot broadcast the program in the JPEG motion or MPEG format. Moreover, unlike digital tuners that do not need any form of compression, analog TV tuners do not relieve the CPU from any load.

A mix between the digital TV tuner and the analog TV tuner is known as the hybrid tuner. This type has one tuner that can be configured to act as an analog tuner or a digital tuner. Such a device is more expensive but it comes with a number of features. The latest TV tuner, for example, comes with a flash memory which helps it to decode various types of video formats. The problem with hybrid tuners, though, is that switching between the systems cannot be done immediately. In other words, the card operates as a digital tuner or an analog tuner until reconfigured.

You see, TV tuner cards answer the question "how can I watch TV shows on my computer".




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