Watching TV on PC

welshman10

I bought a new top of the range PC a couple of months ago (from https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk) and it came with an internal TV card. It also had a piece of software pre-installed called TwinHanDTV, which from what I c an gather does the scanning for TV channels and enables you to watch and record programmes.

What else do I need to do to be able to watch TV on my PC? I have googled it and from what I can gather I need some sort of a digital terrestrial TV antenna, but all the links I follow take me to USB ones, thus defeating the object of already having added (at cost) an internal TV card.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

welshman10

Yes (& now I have to make my post 10 characters!)

welshman10

albertross wrote:

If so, plug it in.., and scan.

You can get set top aerials, but they are usually not very good for digital tv unless you live in a strong signal area. A "digital aerial", is just usually a wideband aerial, with a few more elements than a normal aerial, to give you a better signal. Your existing one may work.

I'm not going up on the roof to get that huge thing down!

I already know I live in quite a weak area in terms of TV reception so basically am I doomed?

Alfie_E

albertross wrote:

Don't you have a downlead that you could plug in and try?

Assuming welshman10 has actually plugged it in…

albertross wrote:

If that doesn't work, you are probably going to need either a roof or loft aerial to get freeview, it may work ok for analogue.

…that could be the problem. The TV card might be digital/Freeview-only, so no analogue channels.

welshman10, do you get Freeview on a your regular TV? If you know you can’t get a sufficiently strong signal for Freeview, then that’s probably the problem – that the PC is Freeview-only.

If this is the problem, you’re not necessarily doomed; as albertross says, a big new aerial might help. You need to appreciate that for large parts of the country, Freeview is transmitted at only a small fraction of the strength of the analogue channels, to stop it interfering with those old channels. When your area has its analogue TV switched off, Freeview will be transmitted at the strength that analogue is today. So, an expensive new aerial that might get you Freeview now, will be completely unnecessary then. The alternative is to go and get an extra analogue TV card for the PC, or replace the current card with a combined card, such as the TwinhanDTV DVB-T (D+A).

welshman10

Alfie_E wrote:

The TV card might be digital/Freeview-only, so no analogue channels.

Just checked - it is a digital TV card.

Seems like my best bet could be waiting until analogue is switched off then? :doh: