Cable to TV

[Gary]

I tried connecting my Virgin Media box to my PC (via a USB TV card) yesterday.
The TV card could not find a signal (worked OK when the TV card was connected to an external aerial).

Has anyone tried doing this?

What I wanted to do was watch cable TV on my PC.

Gary

[Steve]

Gary,

I have to do this myself shortly so I can confirm what I do then.

For now, ideas are:

See if the PC software can switch from looking for Freeview type channels to the old style signal you are probably working with. I'm starting to forget the names of these things... but I guess we are talking of switching from Digital to Analogue.. I think some tuners can still do that and some can't.

Maybe a scart plug that has yellow red and white connectors on the back will go into the Virgin box and let you connect those via a lead to the yellow red and white inputs on your PC.

Maybe your monitor can take two connections, the one I am using to type this does.. and if so maybe you can get a lead from scart to what your monitor takes, so it becomes a TV screen and a monitor and you can switch between the two without using the PC.

Thinking about it, I have a monitor I sometimes use with my PS3 and Virgin HD cable box, and that one has a little converter that takes the HD lead and makes it suitable for the monitor.

Those are some ideas off the top of my head.. hope they help. If not I should know what I had to do here in the next few days.

A last resort is to just use a TV and scart of course... as spending heaps of time and effort may not be worth it if you have a TV around or whatever. If you do that you can perhaps keep the PC connected to a normal aerial and so watch/record Freeview etc via it.

Steve

[Gary]

Cheers Steve,
chat to you about this at the BBQ.
The tuner I'm using is a Cinergy DT USB XS Diversity which I think is digital.
Not sure what the Virgin Media box is outputting though.

Gary