I’m not sure how many people are using a TV card on their computer, rather then a full blown TV, but I know that in my testing of Linux systems, I’ve always needed to have my TV card working so I can use it for my game systems. My TV card is an old Conexant bt878 card, used mostly in my father’s line of work as a very basic capture card that has four possible input ports. Though I’m not kidding when I say it’s old: the card itself was “new” to me, at four years old, and my dad has a few in his truck that are closer to six or seven years old. It’s also exceptionally hard to find working drivers for it that work in Windows 7 or Windows Vista, which perhaps is the worst part.

But being the geek I am, I put up with this and use only Windows XP and Salix Linux, mostly because I know it’s completely supported under both of them along side audio input from the TV card as well. So while my technology is very old, I admit, borderline obsolete, if not already at that mark, it does works like it says it will on my operating systems that I use it for.

However, because I got my card second hand though my father, there were no drivers and certainly no software that came with it to use with it. Once I set up the drivers under either operating system, I’ve only had one problem: how to view it. And like most people out there, I didn’t have a media center PC so I was forced to use third party applications. The two I’ve used and can recommend to people who would like to know how to watch your TV under Windows and Linux are TVTime and DScaler

TVTime, above, is the Linux TV card viewer I always use and recommend.

TVTime is found in the repositories of nearly every Linux system I’ve used to date, such as Ubuntu, Salix, Mandriva, Fedora, etc. Simply open your package manager and search for it, install it, and it works fine. I’ve never had a problem using TVTime with any cards that are supported under Linux, and if you need to change any settings, it’s a simple right click to configure your inputs, picture settings, video processing, and how it looks on the output. For something free, for something simple like this, I feel there is nothing better to use under Linux. However, I’ve also heard good things about MythTV, but I’ve never enjoyed going though the complete hassle that it’s been by comparison. The other thing that keeps me from MythTV is that it has a lot of features that I won’t use or need for a long time, so to me, there’s no point in using something that offers me features I won’t use.

Above this time, is DScaler, a TV viewer for Windows.

On the Windows side, from Windows XP though to Windows 7, there is DScaler. Much like TVTime under Linux, it’s a simple download and install of it’s main site. After install and first run, it will ask you how you’d like it set up, if it’s the only process you’ll be using at a time, or if you’re going to run it with other processes, the speed of your CPU, and if you’d like, the quality of your output, which would be advantageous to change if you’re using a slower machine. After that, you have to select your device from the drop down lists, but if it’s not on there, you can try using ‘Unknown/AutoDetect’ for both, and I know personally that this worked for me under Windows XP and 7.

So if you see a TV card for sale somewhere online sometime, advertising it cheap without software, don’t avoid it and get the pricier one if you won’t use all the features of the more expensive card with software. Most times, the driver can be found online and you can use one of these two TV Card viewers to work with your new TV card. It’s cheap, but hey: it works! That’s what’s important.

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