Ok, let’s start off by establishing that I’m an idiot and this is a stupid question. With that out of the way, I just bought a new laptop and it came with a TV tuner card. What in the WORLD do I do with it?? I hooked it up to my TV by following the directions, and now I can watch TV on my computer. That’s all fine and good, but it has to remain connected to my TV in order to work, right? Who’s going to sit three feet from their TV and watch TV on their computer?! Surely I’m missing something. Someone fill me in on all the great things I can do with my new TV tuner card!
Normally a tv tuner card will allow you to hook up your cable feed to your computer to view tv shows on your computer. It is not necessary to have a TV, only the signal feed.
There should be software that will allow you to watch the TV while you are computing. It usually also allows you to capture the screen as well. Often there are additional inputs which allow you to hook up a video camera, vcr, etc. to view their contents as well. There is probably a manual or website that can give you the specifics for the type of tuner card that you have. If you post some specifics about your tuner card - we can point you in the right direction.
Thank you! Geekiness pays off once in a while - LOL We put TV cards in all of our teacher stations so that they could video capture and do cool PowerPoint presentations for/with their students.
What is the input on your laptop like? Coax? S-Video? RCA? Do you have a cable box or just straight cable? If you have a cable box, what sort of outputs does it have?