Have you been pulling your hair out trying to watch
satellite tv on your computer? Many folks know it
can be done but are confused on how to do it.
I am going to give you my quick and easy recipe for
watching satellite tv on your computer. There are
only a few steps and it is a cinch on you know how.
Most people still use a conventional TV set and a
set-top sattelite receiver to watch sattelite TV but
it's fast becoming popular to watch satellite TV on
your PC. More and more homes today are equipped with
at least one PC and most of those pcs are perfectly
capable of showing DVDs, streamed video and
sattelite TV.
Free to Air (FTA) satellite
broadcasts
Free to air satellite TV broadcasts are
transmitted for you to enjoy without needing to pay
any additional subscription or pay-to-view charges.
Unless you live in the UK of course where you have
to buy a TV licence no matter what TV broadcasts you
receive.
The vast majority of satellite TV to PC solutions
available are designed to receive FTA broadcasts,
which can mean a lot of channels depending on where
in the world you live. If you want to watch premium
channels from your satellite TV provider then you
will need a decoder to unscramble the signal. More
about that in the article Descrambler - Satellite
TV.
What is USB and which version do you need?
The short answer to this is "Make sure you get
USB 2" on your PC. Most if not all modern PCs
support it so you don't need to worry too much.
USB stands for Universal Serial Bus and comes in
two main versions, version 1 and version 2. Version
1 was the first USB standard to be released and
allowed for many peripheral devices to be added to
your PC without needing to open the box and do some
techy stuff.
USB 1 or 1.1 was a little slow however and didn't
perform well when used for video applications. It
will not support high definition TV (HDTV) at all.
USB 2 on the other hand has a maximum speed
specification of 480 Mbps, which is about 40 times
faster than USB 1.1. USB 2 is well suited to all
kinds of video applications that you might want to
use.
What you need to watch satellite TV on your PC
Most of the satellite to PC solutions are
available for Windows ® only so that's what I'm
assuming that you will be using.
PC System requirements
o Microsoft® Windows® XP
o Microsoft® DirectX9.0C or later
o Microsoft® Windows® Media Player 9.0 or later
o P4 2G MHZ CPU or above
o 256MB RAM or above
o VGA card with at least 32MB memory
o Sound card or on board sound chip
o One free USB 2.0 port
In addition to your PC you will need the
following:
o Digital Satellite Dish & LNB
o USB satellite TV receiver with DVB-S
How to connect your USB FTA satellite receiver to
your pc
When you have installed, or had a professional
install, your satellite dish and LNB you can connect
the cable from the dish to your satellite TV
receiver. The next thing to do is to install on your
computer any software that came with your USB
satellite receiver. Just follow the set-up
instructions supplied with the receiver. When you
have done that you can connect a USB cable, which is
normally supplied with the receiver, into a free USB
2 port on your PC. Run up the software that you
installed and away you go.
That's it. It is real simple to watch satellite
tv on your computer!
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satellite tv on your computer?
