how practical is the E1705 tv tuner?

would the e1705 w/ tv tuner actually be able to replace a tv? would it work w/ direct tv? is it recommended to get the truelife screen for watching tv?

thanks

 

no one has used this before???

 

I'm not sure if you can use it with direct TV, but I'm pretty sure you can.

It can be used to replace the TV, but you probably won't get the best quality of images as you would with a TV.

 

In my opinion -

it is a waste of money. The quality won't be good at all.

Im pretty postive that you can hook up Direct TV to the coxial cable input, on the TV Tuner (just like you would hook up cable to it) But that of course you need to have wired to the TV Tuner

 

I don't think it is a waste of money. It just depends on what type of person you are. Futhermore, the quality depends on the tuner.

With a TV tuner, you can save/burn tv shows to your harddrive or DVD. That's one of the bigger benefits of it. It is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to record TV to DVDs.

Some people don't have room for a TV in their room, so a TV tuner would be a good option. I respect your opinion, but I don't think it is a waste of money. I was just implying in my previous post that the quality won't be as good as what you would get on huge TV set.

 

I had the Angel TV tuner, its ok, not fantastic, and there are plenty of other ones I'd rather buy from Hauppauge, the Slingbox, Fusion 5 etc.

SouthernGirl makes some good points about using it to save TV, time shift etc.

Mind you this sorta kills productivity and the space requirements are rather steep (external HDD recommended).

I use mine with Comcast Cable sometimes (mostly to record On Demand content since the DVR in the cable box is limited). Problems that exist are, HD content doesn't play (no DVI/HDMI/Component) in HD, Theres Scan lines in the recording, and noise is higher than normal causing a rather staticy sound.

These are problems that I had with the Angel tuner, my Fusion 5s quality is alot better, however it still pushes the machine rather hard when its recording, and well the size requirement is still there of course.

Added side note, Dual Core of course may make it much more feasible to record while still doing other rather taxing things besides website browsing.

 

so is the quality lower b/c its choppy or is it just b/c of the lower resolution? are there delays when changing the channels? does it buffer or does it actually work like a tv?

 

Theres no delay in changing the channel or anything basically I'm still using the Cable Box (you can set it up so that the cable is going directly into it but you tend to lose alot of functionality *esp with cable*).

I assume the Scan Lines are from a lower refresh rate coming across the rather crappy S-Video/Composite connection.

As far as buffering as soon as I change channels it immediatly starts to save whatever your viewing.

My way is messier, for instance I can't use it to change channels for me and save a show. I could if I ran the cable directly to it than used the MCE software, however it than won't work at all with my premium channels and On Demand content.

Really implementation differs from person to person, but the quality of the unit (video/audio) should be similar across the board.