Anyone getting ready for the season premiere.....

I only really watch University Challenge and the news on TV.

Anything I especially want to see I'll download, but that's very rare. (The last thing I downloaded was a BBC Documentary on animals)
 
I only really watch University Challenge and the news on TV.

Anything I especially want to see I'll download, but that's very rare. (The last thing I downloaded was a BBC Documentary on animals)

I bet you collect stamps too.
 
I bet you collect stamps too.

I couldn't even tell you how much a 1st Class stamp costs.

I don't want to waste time watching TV, I'd rather be reading or doing something else, all of these new "drama" shows like 24 etc. just seem cliched and boring, I constantly feel like I've seen this before.

Today I will hopefully be sleeping as I was woken up at 3am by my housemate playing Hulk Hogan's "Real American" at full volume, this was the climax of a night spent watching CSI: Las Vegas.
 
I'm looking forward to it, although apparently not as much as you are. Its probably the only show I give a crap about this year. I only wish I could watch it in HD.

I was going to suggest that you pick up a HD tuner for your TV (assuming it's an HD monitor), but was floored when I saw how expensive they still are. I imagined that they'd be far cheaper by now. Even the antennas are a hundred fucking dollars.
 
I couldn't even tell you how much a 1st Class stamp costs.

I don't want to waste time watching TV, I'd rather be reading or doing something else, all of these new "drama" shows like 24 etc. just seem cliched and boring, I constantly feel like I've seen this before.

Today I will hopefully be sleeping as I was woken up at 3am by my housemate playing Hulk Hogan's "Real American" at full volume, this was the climax of a night spent watching CSI: Las Vegas.

:lol: I was kidding, theac.
 
The girl I'm dating got me hooked on Nip/Tuck so that's really all I watch. Except for Adult Swim and Futurama reruns. And hockey games.

And the Discovery channel, the History channel, the Science channel, the National Geographic channel, the Military channel...
 
I was going to suggest that you pick up a HD tuner for your TV (assuming it's an HD monitor), but was floored when I saw how expensive they still are. I imagined that they'd be far cheaper by now. Even the antennas are a hundred fucking dollars.
There's also the little problem that I don't have any PCI slots in my PC. Only PCIe. There currently aren't any HDTV tuners for sale that use PCIe. I could go the USB route, but those are a little less than spectacular.
 
How about the 10th Season of South Park tonight??!? :nevx3:

cartman.jpg
 
Wouldn't USB have throughput issues?

Well, in theory, no. ATSC transmissions are set at 19.39 Mbits/sec. Most cable operators run at that for the OTA channels. They have the ability to run up to 38.78 Mbit/sec, but only use that much on high demand HD events. USB2.0 Hi-Speed is supposed to be 480Mbits/sec. So you've got more than enough room ... if you've got a dedicated Hi-Speed port. Usually if anything else is plugged into the USB, it'll downclock to match the slowest device on the bus.

Then there is also the issue that for all the USB tuners I've seen the decoding is done in software. That's well and fine for DVR applications where you just want to record now and watch later, but I've found that in attempting to watch live TV, the error correction is almost non-existant. You get decode errors, dropped frames, and other "burps" which really mess with the experience and make it not as cool. If you're going to be watching a lot of live HD on PC, you really need to get a hardware decoder.