A TV Tuner Card is a device, which allows you to watch TV in your computer. It allows television signals to be received by the computer. It can be an external or an in-built device. It also allows you to record programs in the hard disk of the computer directly. However, it uses the Internet to receive signals. There are mainly two types of tuners: digital and analog.
A digital TV Tuner Card broadcasts the program in the MPEG 2 format. Hence you do not need any encoder. It can either broadcast the whole program or separate the audio and video. The tuners can rewind or fast-forward the program as per your requirement. Some of them even allow you to divide the computer screen so that you can watch more than one program at the same time.
An analog TV Tuner Card is cheaper and best suited for real time viewing. The more expensive of these tuners can broadcast the program in the JPEG Motion or MPEG format. This relieves the CPU from any load since they do not need any form of compression.
The hybrid versions of TV Tuner Card can broadcast both digital and analog signals. Such a device is more expensive but it comes with a number of features. A TV Tuner allows you to record programs for viewing later. The latest TV Tuner comes with a flash memory, which helps it to decode various types of video formats. However, the flash card can either decode an analog or a digital signal. Some tuners can even work as radios because of the similarity between FM and television signals. So if you feel like it, you can use it as a radio or TV.
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