Internet TV Tuner Card

A Internet TV tuner card is a hardware device that enabled television signals to be received by a computer. A TV tuner can also function as video capture card, which means that you can record your favorite programs on to your computer's hard drive.

These days you get various types of TV Tuner Cards. They vary from very cheap cards to very expensive ones. Other than the price, the major difference in these cards is its video and sound quality. Each card comes with its own version of advanced graphic and gaming features and with advanced digital sound quality.

A TV Tuner card is a PCI-bus expansion card, which also comes as a USB device. The card comprises of a receiver, tuner, demodulator, and an analog-to-digital converter for analog TV. Much like TV sets; a TV Tuner Card is also programmed to adjust to radio frequencies and video formats used in each country. Since the FM radio spectrum lies between TV channels 6 and 7, a TV Tuner Card can also be used as a FM radio.

Most of the signal processing is done by the TV Tuner Cards itself. They convert radio signal into an on-screen image and some even make use of direct links to the sound card and video card to bypass the CPU entirely. External tuners can convert a signal into either a video stream that is suitable for onscreen display or to an intermediate format such as MPEG. In either case, the CPU is needed to direct the image onto the screen.

These days you get TV Tuner Cards that support digital television broadcasts. A tuner that displays an HDTV image on your computer screen is less expensive than a high-definition television system, but it has a smaller viewing area.