[MagicNumbers]

Ok, here's the situation.

I have my computer (with MSI K8T Neo board, AMD 64 early version chip) and monitor and a small flat screen TV hooked up to my cable box on my desk.

Its set up so that I can do work on the computer independently from watching the news on TV.

What I would like to do is set up a connection from TV to my computer so that I can record live TV (without having to watch it on my monitor) and save these clips for later use on my website.

I've done some research and it appears that I will need a TV tuner card and some third party software.

My question is how should I go about doing this?

Btw, my TV has an HDMI slot, an analog PC slot (I assume that's for it to act as a monitor), an S-Video slot, and video and audio slots.

Thanks for any help in advance.

[Fozzik]

What you'll need is a TV tuner card and some software.

lol You've basically got it figured out already. I don't know a whole lot more than you do on the subject.

You're likely going to want to plug the cable box directly into the tuner card (using a basic coax or composite video cable) unless you are looking to view / record HD. If HD is your goal, you are looking at a much more expensive device, probably external, which will sit between your cable box and your computer and decode the signal.

[MagicNumbers]

Thanks Fozzik! I was able to find a tuner that fits in a USB slot and it works very well.

Do you or anyone else happen to know anything about personalized web flash players? I can convert my WMV video to FLV fine, but I need to find a flash player that I can embed on the web pages I want. I also need to customize the player to fit my site with branding and what not.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Edit: I realize that this is the hardware forum but I thought I'd throw it out there.

[Fozzik]

Great question...sadly I know nothing.

Hopefully someone with useful knowledge will chime in.

[MagicNumbers]

Ok, so I finally got things working by buying a tv tuner that plugs into a USB port for about $100 Canadian and the thing works great. I had to splice my cable line coming out of my digital box, one going to the TV and the other attaching to the USB TV tuner. The software is good for my needs, it's called Hauppauge WinTV and I set it up so that it plays what I'm watching currently on TV. It has a lot of other options, most of which I don't understand or haven't cared to understand heheh. It allows me to take Screen Captures of the playing video that I can then save as well as, obviously record and save video.

Anyway, I have another question. What software is available to allow me to record streaming video online? In this case specifically Cspan because I can't get the channel in Canada so I have to watch it online.

[Belarios]

Originally Posted by MagicNumbers

Do you or anyone else happen to know anything about personalized web flash players? I can convert my WMV video to FLV fine, but I need to find a flash player that I can embed on the web pages I want. I also need to customize the player to fit my site with branding and what not.

The JW player is popular. http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

It has a free non-commercial license and an affordable commercial one.

It also has a variety of skins. http://www.longtailvideo.com/addons/skins

[MagicNumbers]

Originally Posted by Belarios

The JW player is popular. http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

It has a free non-commercial license and an affordable commercial one.

It also has a variety of skins. http://www.longtailvideo.com/addons/skins

Thanks for the tip!

[MagicNumbers]

Ok so I settled on Moyea Flash Video MX Pro that allows me to edit and even watermark the clips I'll be recording with my logo. It comes with various skins like the one suggested above and has a separate flash converter program which creates all the files needed to upload to a website.

Although now I'm thinking I should upload to youtube instead of paying for the bandwidth of flash video. Anyone have any thoughts on this?