To Capture and Record

Capture cards, also known as TV Tuner cards, allow you to watch live and record TV on your computer. There are quite a few manufacturers of the cards, but the best known (and perhaps market leader) is Hauppauge.

One obvious thing about the TV-Tuner cards, but I'll point it out anyway, is that they are usually expansion cards, although some plug into a USB port. The expansion card variety plug in to your motherboard at a 90 degree angle. The nice thing about this is, as they make better ones, it will be possible to upgrade yours. The other thing to consider is that your motherboard has a limited number of expansion slots. If you want to be able to record lots of programs at once, you're going to need lots of expansion slots, and perhaps you should consider an ATX, rather than microATX motherboard.

On the motherboard that I picked there are 4 expansion slots. One is a PCI Express x16 slot. This is a high speed expansion port which is intended for a HD video graphics card. Another is a PCI Express x1 slot. This use to be the standard video graphics slot until HD came along. Finally, the motherboard has two standard PCI slots. You can get tuner cards for PCI Express x1, standard PCI and USB. So, when buying a TV Tuner card, you need to consider which slot you're going to plug it into, and you need to consider its height. The Lian Li case is a low profile case, so we should consider only low profile cards.

We also need to consider what types of inputs that the card can process and how many it can process at once. The latter is, of course, as many as possible, so let's worry about the signals. There are two potential sources for TV signals, cable and over the air. Until recently, it was impossible to record the cable HD signals, but that is changing. There is a new standard called ClearQAM, for broadcasting unencrypted (that is, free) digital channel over the cable system, and there are new cards for capturing that signal.

Let's take a moment to consider the different standards for television signals: NTSC, ATSC, and QAM. NTSC stands for "National Television System Committee" and it is the standard analog television signal that has been broadcast for years. (See the article at Wikipedia for more information.) ATSC stands for "Advanced Television Systems Committee" and it is the standard for Digital Television (DTV) that was defined by the FCC. (See the article at HDTV Primer for more information.) Finally, QAM stands for Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. This is a sophisticated method for transmitting digital signals. (See the article at tech-faq.com for details. There is another article at Wikipedia too.) While NTSC and ATSC describe programs broadcast over the air, QAM is the standard used by the cable systems. The term ClearQAM describes programs that are broadcast over the cable "in the clear", that is, not encrypted. Typically, a digital program is that available over the air is usually broadcast over the cable in ClearQAM.

So, what does that mean for us? Since the over the air stations are all switching to digital, it would seem like we don't need a TV-Tuner that supports NTSC, but the cable system is still using that standard for its non-digital channels. ClearQAM support is a definite necessity if we expect to record from digital cable. ATSC is only needed if we also want to record over the air digital programs. Thus when picking a card, you need to focus on one that has the recording capabilities that we need. It would be nice to have a card that does it all.

But, there is one other thing that the card can do to truly do it all, and that is to be able to record s-video and composite video so that we can record video from a camcorder (to archive those family vacations videos) or cable boxes (to record pay cable channels).

If what we wanted to do is simply capture the digital broadcasts, we could get away with a card that fit in the standard PCI slot, but, if we want it all, then we're going to need to get a card that uses the PCI Express x1, and fortunately, we have one of them available in the motherboard.

Is there a card that does all of this? Fortunately, there are many to choose from. I picked the Hauppauge 2250. It can record two programs at once, from both analog and digital sources. This is also a low profile card. This card seems to have everything, but let's take a closer look. Because it is a low profile card, it is hard to get all of its inputs, TV, FM, and two sets of A/V (composite video and audio), on the mounting bracket of the card. Instead the second A/V set are on an auxiliary mounting bracket. Thus, while the 2250 takes only one PCI slot, it can take take two mounting brackets, if you want to record a second set of sources. Plus, the description of the card promises to be able to record two programs at once: "record two TV programs at the same time: two analog cable TV channels, two digital TV channels or one analog cable and one clear QAM digital cable TV channel". What this is trying to say is that there is only one TV connector on the card. Thus you can't record a ATSC and a cable channel at the same time. It is either "over the air" or "cable". (I don't know about you, but I could live without the FM input in order to be able to record both ATSC and ClearQAM at the same time.) I would be unhappy about having to give up a PCI slot for the second AV input, but I'm not planning on using the PCI Express x16 slot any time soon. And I sincerely doubt that I'll ever use the second A/V input, so if I ever want use the PCI Express x16, removing the second mounting bracket won't be that big of a loss.

Another question about the 2250 is whether you get it with a remote or not. The remote control is necessary for controlling the recording software that uses the card. Most are MCE remotes, which stands for Microsoft Media Center Edition. You'll probably just need one of these, so any other TV-Tuner cards that you buy can merely be the card itself.

One other thing about the 2250 is that it has a "blaster" capability. What this means is that, not only can it receive remote control signals, it can also broadcast them, enabling it to control other devices like your cable box. No more setting up a pay cable program twice, once on the VCR and once on the cable box, in order to record it. This card can truly do it all.

Had enough yet with this complicated topic? Well, there's one other thing to touch on: If you decide that you would like to record over the air digital programs, you'll need a digital antenna. Getting an outside antenna works best, but an indoor one may be possible. Go to Antenna Web to find out for sure.

So now, I think, we've covered all the hardware pieces that go into an HTPC. Let's briefly talk about the operating system next before we get the complete shopping list.