By Gerry Morris
The topic of this month’s column won’t impact your bottom line significantly but, may add in a small way to your quality of life. Occasionally I buy a piece of computer hardware that greatly exceeds my expectations. I purchased something recently that really works well and does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Here’s the story.
In my type of practice I watch a lot of VHS tapes of, for instance, roadside sobriety tests, police interviews with suspects, etc. Although a lot of jurisdictions are shifting over to DVD there is still quite a volume of evidence recorded primarily on video tape. Rather than clutter up my office with a TV set, I prefer to use some sort of video input device on my computer to allow me to watch the tapes on my computer screen. There are plenty of them on the market. For a long time I had installed on my desktop computer an ATI All-In-Wonder video card that included a TV tuner. I could attach a VHS tape player to the TV input (either coax or RCA inputs) and play the video through the TV tuner software. I could also hook up an antenna or cable TV to the coax input and in theory watch television.
I said in theory because analogue TV reception at my office is problematic. Because of the location of the building and of my office in the building, TV reception is extremely poor. I don’t watch a lot of TV there but I occasionally work a weekend when there’s a game on I’d like to see or I’ll watch the news after hours. The poor reception made watching TV hit or miss. Because I would be a commercial subscriber, the minimum charge for the cable at my office would be more than I can justify for the small amount of TV watching I do. All I really wanted was to be able to watch the local channels.
As we speak (or read) television is going through a revolution. Under current FCC regulations by 2009 there will be no more analogue television broadcasts. (This deadline had been pushed back at least once). By the end of that year all over the air television broadcasts will be digital. The benefit is that far less bandwidth is required for digital signals making way for more channels with more features including high definition pictures.
Those of you who already have HDTV sets with over the air tuners know that in most TV markets of any size there are already digital channels for all the local TV stations. For instance, in Austin all of the network affiliates and the PBS station have digital channels that broadcast the same programming as the analogue channels but in various resolutions of HDTV depending on the network feed. Some programs are in 16 X 9 widescreen format.
Recently ATI (a leading producer of graphics cards) has released a PCI card HDTV tuner called the HDTV Wonder at a street price of about $100. The card contains an analogue and digital TV tuner. Given the price of HDTV’s I thought “How could this thing possibly work for 100 bucks”? I bought one, and to my surprise it works great.
Setup is easy with the included software. The software contains a Media Center application that includes a DVD player (if you have a DVD drive), analogue and digital TV applications and programs to view video files and play CD’s. The kit even includes a “set top” antenna that I have sitting on top of my roll top desk. Once the software is installed and the antenna is connected, a setup program searches for digital and analogue channels. Also included is a wireless remote that interfaces with the computer via a USB receiver.
Reception at my office is great. As with digital phones, either you have a signal or you don’t. There’s no snow or interference once you’ve locked on to the signal. I connected my VHS player to the analogue tuner input to watch video tapes on my desktop.
As I said the card works flawlessly. However there are a couple of things to consider before purchasing one, other than whether there are any digital channels available in your area. First, the video card on your computer must be capable of handling the digital picture resolutions. My All-in Wonder 7500 was not. ATI says any video card with 64 mb of memory and capable of handling Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics drivers (a component of Windows XP if all updates are installed) will work. Postings on various user boards indicate otherwise. I changed out my video card to an ATI 9600 pro at a cost of about $100 and it handled the HD picture flawlessly.
The second consideration is that if you are using a PC with Windows XP Media Center Edition as the operation system the HDTV Wonder is compatible but with certain limitations. When you install the software for the card you’ll notice that the ATI Media Center application is not installed. This is because Windows MCE will recognize the card and use the Media Center software to operate the tuner. However, Windows MCE will only recognize the card’s digital tuner and only then if you have a separate analogue tuner card also installed.
I recently decided to get a faster computer for my desktop and found a deal on a refurbished HP with a lot of bells and whistles including the Microsoft Media Center Edition operating system. MCE is basically Windows XP Professional with the Media Center applications added in. I soon discovered that my HDTV Wonder card wouldn’t work “stand alone” with my new computer. I bought a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150MCE analogue tuner card for about $50 online and installed it along with the HDTV Wonder. Everything works fine. The VHS player is attached to the analogue card input and the HDTV card pulls in local TV digital channels. The graphics card on the new computer is an ATI X1300.
If you are willing to pay the price of a cable connection or otherwise just want analogue reception the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150MCE is a great choice. The “MCE” stands for Media Center Edition so if you are not running that operation system you should get the plain old WinTV-PVR-150. However, for $100 you can get the HDTV Wonder with both analogue and digital tuners and enjoy HDTV over the air broadcasts.
E. G. “Gerry” Morris is a solo practitioner and has practiced law for over 27 years in Austin, Texas. He is certified as a Criminal Law Specialist by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. His firm web site is at www.egmlaw.com. Email your comments and questions to Gerry at tech@egmlaw.com .
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