Watch Your Favorite Tv Programs On Your Lcd Monitor
You have a monitor and you want to see TV programs on it. Is it possible? If that is your question, the answer to that question is a yes. But how can a monitor enable us to view TV programs? That is what technology is all about - making things work. In this case we are talking about an Lcd monitor with tv tuner. As we know, a monitor in computer parlance is an electronic device usually attached to a computer for display of the computers output. There are a variety of monitors available and depending upon the technology used for display they vary. Thus we have Flat panel monitors, Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs), To understand how to make a monitor become a TV, we need some basic knowledge of television technology to appreciate how it works. First let us start with a basic question. How are we able to see movies on TV? It is like this. Just like radio signals programs broadcast on TV are actually converted into TV signals are beamed or transmitted by the TV stations. The TV in our home or office acts as a receiver and receives the signal. This is a broad view of how TV works. As pointed out above the TV in our home acts as a receiver and receives the TV signals. Therefore what we need to do to watch TV programs on monitors is to convert the monitors into receivers of TV signals. The question is how? This is where TV tuners come into play. A TV tuner is a device which enables a computer to receive TV signals. TV tuners also function as video capture cards which enable us to record television programs. Typically a TV tuner card contains a receiver, tuner, demodulator, and a converter (to convert analog signals into digital signals) for analog TV. TV tuners can also receive radio frequencies as well as video formats specific to a country. Nowadays TV tuners which are used in computers use DSP. The advantage of using DSP is that the TV tuners only need to download the firmware upgrade in order to change the video format and the DSP can be programmed to receive FM radio signals as well.Newer versions of TV tuners have enough flash memory to hold the firmware so that the tuner can be used in various countries without the necessity for flashing the firmware. There are two types of tuner cards currently in vogue - one for analog TVs and the other for digital TVs. Analog TVs are TVs which use analog TV signals for transmission and receipt. Digital TVs on the other hand, use digital signals for the purpose. Irrespective of the type of data received, the TV tuner's job remains the same - to receive TV signals. The basic difference between analog and digital TV tuners lies in the fact that digital TVs receive TV signals in MPEG format and consequently do not need encoders. Analog TV tuners need encoders to convert the analog signals to MPEG format. This would imply that analog TV tuners need more processing power unlike Digital TV tuners. Apart from the two TV tuners mentioned above, there are Hybrid TV tuners which are a combination of analog and digital TV tuners. Hybrid tuners can work both as Digital tuners or Analog TV tuners, but never at the same time. A hybrid TV tuner has to be configured to work as Digital tuners or Analog TV tuners. In other words, if the Hybrid TV tuner has been configured to work as a digital TV tuner, then in case you want it to work as an Analog TV tuner, it has to be configured to work as an Analog TV tuner. The names of some TV tuner manufacturing companies selected at random are ATI Technologies, D-Link, e-VGA, Leadtek, Pinnacle Systems, TerraTec and Vista view.
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