VM TV signal straight into a desktop PC
 

I recently had a VM basic triple bundle installed: phone line and broadband both installed in my front study, where the pc and master cordless phone hub live, with the Tv line installed in the living room at the other end of the house, umm, where the TV lives.

So, as I didn't want to pay the extra for a V+ box to record, & I'm basically a cheapscate, I asked the installer if it was possible for him to install another feed for TV into the hole where the BB & phone come into the study. Free, of course, as he was already there: just another foot of coax I thought, with a cheap tv socket glued to the wall.

The external brown master splitter box is right next to where the cables enter the study, btw.

My idea was to get a cheap TV tuner card for the pc & watch live TV on the PC ( oh, & incidentally record it if I wanted on the pc's half-terrabyte drive, but I didn't say this to him, of course.)

His response was, 'Sorry, that won't work, as all pc TV cards only take analogue signals, not a VM digital one'.

I didn't press the point, as I was too excited about having the other bits installed at the time, so just accepted this. He was otherwise perfectly frank & an excellent installer.

I haven't researched this too much, but it'd seem logical that if a very high spec pc can't take a digital input, there's something wrong!

Could anyone tell me if it's possible to feed a VM TV signal into a cheap, say Hauppage pc TV tuner card? Or is the signal scrambled?

I realise it's too late to have one installed now for free ( & of course I WOULDN'T DREAM of taking another feed from my external box myself! ), but would this work?

My idea was that I could watch or record programmes on the pc, burn them onto a DVD & watch them later on the DVD player in the living room? Or is there a more elegant and Extremely Cheap alternative?

Re: VM TV signal straight into a desktop PC
 

No it's not. The signal is a DVB-C signal, so before you could even think of using it you'd need a DVB-C tuner card. Easy enough to get. However the channels are all encrypted, and require the use of a VM smartcard, which will only work with the set top box it's paired to.

What you could do, would be to have a multiroom subscription, and an additional set top box, which you could then use the analogue outputs from to feed an analogue capture card, and record on the PC that way, but without a Virgin supplied and paid for STB in the equation there is no way to get the PC to decode the signal.

Re: VM TV signal straight into a desktop PC
 

Hi,

The installer is correct, the tuner in your PC is for terrestrial TV signals (dvb-t) and not cable signals (dvb-c) so it would not work. However, if your PC has composite video in, you could hook the box up to the PC with a SCART to RCA cable which would mean you could choose the channel on the box and then record it on the PC. Basically your PC is acting as a hard disk recorder though obviously what you are recording you would have to be watching at the same time.

Hope this helps,
Ben :)

Re: VM TV signal straight into a desktop PC
 

Thankyou for that TheDon. I was equating the VM signal with my old Freeview setup & just remembered the card in set top box.

---------- Post added 23-04-2010 at 00:03 ---------- Previous post was 22-04-2010 at 23:57 ----------

Thank you, Ben. I'm getting the picture now.

Or not, if you see what I mean. Worth a try asking, though.

Re: VM TV signal straight into a desktop PC
 

This is basically what I do using Windows Media Centre. I have an IR blaster set up so the PC controls the channel changing and because I never watch anything live anymore I rarely get situations where I cannot record because of clashes.

I'd love a legit way of feeding my paid for TV straight into my PC (not interested in stealing at all) in the same way that CableCard works in the US.

Re: VM TV signal straight into a desktop PC
 

I know man give us a damn cable card solution. IIRC the US cable companies had their hands forced by the FCC to go down the cable card route. I can't imagine OFCOM doing the same here.