5. OTA HDTV and SDTV Tuner Cards

Our HTPC shouldn't be limited to DVD playback, but also capture and play back analog, digital and radio signals. The market for these kinds of expansion cards is nearly as large and confusing as that of motherboards. Every month it seems that vendors offer new products, be they more expansion cards or break-out boxes of some kind or another.

Europeans are lucky to be able to buy and use so called hybrid cards that can handle both analog and digital satellite broadcasts in a single device. On the other hand, North Americans generally must use separate cards that include an ATSC tuner for over the air (OTA) HDTV signals, or NTSC tuner to receive analog broadcast and unencrypted cable television. While North American consumers can choose between DirecTV or DISH Networks for satellite TV, there are no cards that support reception of either company's encrypted signals.

So many North American HTPC builders install multiple single-tuner NTSC cards (or dual-tuner models) so they can record one program while watching another, and sometimes add an OTA HDTV card for a total requirement of two or three PCI slots (or combination of PCI and PCI-Express). This pretty much pushes these builders into larger cases, where motherboards supporting more PCI slots can be accomodated.

The products mentioned in the following sections are popular, affordable and widely available. But they're just a small sampling of what is available for a North American-grown HTPC.

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150 MCE

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 MCE

Avermedia AVerTVHD MCE A180

DVICO Fusion HDTV 5

Many other products, including PCI cards for standard definition TV and HDTV, or USB attached external devices, or CardBus cards for the same tasks are available from well-known vendors. These include ATI, Adaptec, Creative Labs, Diamond, Hauppauge, Leadtek, Pinnacle, PowerColor and others. See the PC-TV Page at Ruel.Net for the most complete list of North American compatible TV tuner cards that we know of anywhere.