My PC Is A TV, Now With Hi-Definition Option!

I've revisited my review of the Nebula PC TV card, because, true to their word, Nebula haven't sat back and let developments pass them by. Since buying the card, trials of Hi-Definition digital TV have started on terrestrial TV. The format has been available for several months on Sky satellite , but as you can imagine, at a cost.

Being able to watch live TV on your PC, and record it, has been with us for some time. Internal adapter cards like the WinTV from Hauppauge come to mind, and there are several other makers in this multi-media field. Quite often, these cards also serve as screen-capture interfaces to enable, for example, an analogue camcorder to be attached.

Trying to find a card capable of receiving Freeview is not much more yielding, but you do at least find a few cards if you search Google for such things as ‘Freeview PC card’.

For one thing, because it’s in a PC, it can record programmes, timed or otherwise, to hard disk; the overall capacity being limited by your own disk space available.

Initially, when I wrote this, the Nebula card had stolen a march on the other Freeview solutions by introducing an Electronic Programme Guide of their own, downloaded from the Internet – the problem with other receiving kit at the time was that you could either only get the ‘Now & Next’ facility, or if you were really lucky, and in an area where a trial was being carried out, a programme guide stretching a whole 4 days into the future – heady stuff. Nowadays, a full 8-day EPG is available to any set top box that will listen (old OnDigital boxes won’t ever be upgraded to receive this), so it seems that Nebula are phasing out this facility. Certainly, my card now seems to be always up to date without ever needing the download.

The packaging is very satisfactory, and even the foam used is that nice slick stuff – no squeaky noises from blown-foam to set your teeth on edge. Inside, you get, obviously, the card and a remote sensor to plug into it, to be placed later in the line of sight of the remote control that also comes in this package. The remote is one of those learning versions from OneForAll (model URC7544) and is capable of controlling this card (under the subterfuge of using the controls intended for a VCR*), the TV, a satellite box and a DVD player. I really MUST try to use this as a means of getting rid of some of the burgeoning stock of remotes now threatening to collapse the arm of the sofa. There has been no attempt by Nebula to ‘badge-engineer’ the OneForAll remote.

Basically, you have very little to do, and anyone familiar with installing, say, an internal modem, will have no problem at all. Simply locate a spare PCI slot, push the card into place, and screw it down as per the other cards. Plug in a TV aerial (antenna) and the remote sensor - now you’re ready to roll.

Despite being part of a common numbering range, the radio channels can be kept completely separate, which is useful. Watching TV is merely a matter of launching the software, choosing a channel with the remote control (or mouse), selecting ‘windowed’ or full-screen and getting on with it. Of course, with radio, you can even run it minimised, since there's very little to see except a kind of 'test card' information page.

You can set up a timed programme in two ways. One is to use the weekly listing (EPG) that you have already stored – you scan through this and click on the programmes that you want, it’s as easy as that. Likewise, you can set up a timer manually, for something maybe more than a week away – useful for those two-week holidays, but slightly inferior to the Sky offering which frequently allows you to add a ‘serial link’ to regular programme timings. Having said that, the Sky EPG doesn’t allow for adjustments to take into account late running programmes and the like – this one does. This EPG does however allow for multiple occurences of the programme but I'm not sure what happens if you select a programme that then gets cancelled.

CONTROLLING IT

I would suggest that these should be cordless, either normal cordless or Bluetooth. In general, the mouse alone can carry out the vast majority of activities, so you wouldn’t have to sit with a keyboard on your lap. I found it a little strange to start with, being able to use a PC from the couch. With the addition of a wireless LAN link, I COULD surf, handle e-mail and download the EPG directly from there. Make sure that your cordless devices will ‘stretch that far’ viz-a-viz transmitting between PC and couch! The only major problem this new flexibility gives is that a TV screen is normally nowhere near clear enough to read small text, and finding your way around menus is more a matter going from memory and the apparent length of the words! Unfortunately, a large flat screen with the definition suited to PC use would cost a fortune, but no doubt they’re coming. Sony is making such claims for their new Wega range.

A) PICTURE QUALITY - The TV picture quality is every bit as good in sharpness as from my Sony stand-alone box, which has in itself received accolades for its quality, but part of the credit for this goes to the fact that my graphics card also has a proper S-Video output specifically for ‘driving’ a TV. Picture quality on an 800x600 PC monitor is even better than TV, but unless you want ‘TV while you work’, it’s hardly a suitable situation for family viewing.

D) SHARING - If you run a home network, then the Nebula software allows for a client/server set-up, whereby the machine with the TV card becomes a server, and the client is given the same access to watching live TV, changing channels, and setting timers. This only works well without data loss, if your LAN is either hardwired or a faster wireless set-up, preferably ‘wireless G’, and not too far from the wireless access point, which would lessen the transmission rate. Be prepared for indignant howls from elsewhere in the house along the lines of ‘Oi, who just changed the channel – I was watching that!’ To be honest, I've gone little further than

Pictures of Nebula Electronics DigiTV Card

Gary (Before He Knew The England-Portugal Result!)

Unfortunately, you can’t depend on them always being in the same place, even on the same channel. For example, BBC 4 carries a lot of ancient 4:3 format programming, with the ‘DOG’ placed about one third of the way across a wide-screen TV’s screen. This reverts to being about one sixth of the distance on a true wide-screen picture.

G) ONE (OR EIGHT) AT A TIME PLEASE - As with any single tuner STB, you can only watch/record one thing at a time, BUT with one remarkable exception - unlike analogue TV, Freeview digital channels do not have unique radio frequencies, in fact the vast majority of the BBC’s stations are shoe-horned into one channel. This means that, in theory, you can record the content of up to, say, eight channels in one go. This could be very useful if you want to record clashing programmes on Beebs One and Two simultaneously.

B) ARCHIVING - At the first time of writing, you couldn't directly transfer the digital format of your hard disk TV recording to a (re)writable DVD and still expect a household DVD player to accept the disk. To save the added complication of using some conversion software, this was addressed in a later version of Nebula’s own software, allowing for the mpeg format used on hard disk to be made compatible with a DVD player’s needs.

At the moment, I am still able to make a DVD of a programme using Ulead Videostudio 7 (intended chiefly for camcorders) as an intermediary, and this would in fact allow me to trim the programme to the right length and edit out commercials on something that I really wanted to keep.

As a test, I've also used the facility to make an SVCD as opposed to a DVD. The results with the former are somewhat 'blocky' when rapid action takes place - no doubt it would be as good as DVD if you recorded a test card if you could find one, or maybe some nocturnal live (?) Big Brother. Frankly, I can buy DVD-Rs for around 30p now, so the 15p saved by using CD-Rs is hardly worth it. Incidentally, the Nebula card allows you to generate a test card, but there's no prepubescent girl with balloons and teddy bear, just boring old circles and lines!

A) To USB OR NOT TO USB, THAT IS THE QUESTION - If your PC is to form part of an aerial lead ‘daisy-chain’, just like a home VCR would, then it needs to be left running, otherwise the pass-through of the signal to your TV for everyday watching will be severely downgraded when the PC is turned off. Nebula’s solution to this is to buy the USB external version of the card, which maintains its own power*. This would also be a suitable solution for laptop owners unable to install a typical PCI card. Fortunately, my digital TV has an ‘antenna-out’ socket doing nothing at the moment, making it easy to ensure that the PC is on the end of the line, not in the middle of it.

B) NO SMART CARD (YET) - There is yet to be any provision for the new TopUpTV offering, which has annoyingly reappeared after everyone was ASSURED that there would be NO subscription element to digital terrestrial TV. The Nebula website recently carried out a straw poll to gauge potential demand for an adapter to hold and read a ‘smart card’, the findings of which were 80-odd % in favour of the add-on facility. Nebula are now looking at the best way to provide this facility.

D) ‘SYS REQS’ - Your PC needs to be at least a Pentium III running at 800mhz with 64 mbytes of RAM - this explains why one of my PCs will detect the server but produces a jerky picture - it's Pentium III, 500 mhz!

It’s difficult to talk about a TV Tuner card without making at least a passing mention of the needs of a Media Centre PC. Bear in mind that if this monster is to sit in the lounge, it needs to be quiet – having enough screaming fans to raise a hovercraft just won’t do. A site like www.quietpc.com is invaluable as a source of ‘hushed’ bits, fans, power units etc. and as I’ve written elsewhere, changing a small diameter fan for a larger one makes one hell of a difference. The cooling fan placed over your CPU (Pentium chip, what-have-you) is usually a small diameter ‘screamer’, well overdue for a makeover, noise-wise. QuietPC.com even supply cases that look like hi-fi; black, champagne or silver with those silver tubular feet, which seem to be de rigueur in audio equipment.

You can actually buy a Media Centre PC with Freeview tuner, DVD-writer and wireless LAN access but at around a grand for the main box, (you supply the screen) I think I’ll stick to the stealth approach of upgrading what I’ve got!

Having had cause to re-install the card, and retune it after a hard drive crash, I noticed that it had added a BBC HD channel to its list. You may already be aware of this if you've been into a big Tescos lately and looked at their 'wall' of flat screen TVs all seemingly playing a loop of BBC HD demo programmes. These are actually being fed by Sky satellite receivers. HD via your aerial is much more in its infancy, i.e. only to be seen in London at the moment, and then only in demo mode, that is to say a tedious carousel of clips from recent drama shot in HD.