TV Sticks
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A TV tuner card is a computer component that allows television signals to be received by a computer. Most TV tuners also function as video capture Sticks, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk.
While typically a PCI-bus expansion card, they can also be a USB device. Some TV Sticks double as TV tuners. The card contains a receiver, tuner, demodulator, and a analog-to-digital converter for analog TV. Like TV sets, each version is designed for the radio frequencies and video formats used in each country. In addition to the frequency tuner, many include a composite video input. Many TV tuners can function as FM radios: this is because the FM radio spectrum lies between television channels 6 and 7, and television sound uses the same modulation as FM.
Some TV Sticks provide DVB reception for digital radio, television or data signals (either with or without hardware MPEG decoding capability); these may be used to receive satellite broadcasts but normally provide no analogue input capability.
Most internal tuners do all the signal processing needed to convert a radio signal into an on-screen image; some even make use of direct links to the sound card and video card to bypass the CPU entirely. External tuners may convert the signal into either a video stream suitable for display on the screen, or to an intermediate format such as MPEG; in either case, the CPU is needed to direct the image onto the screen.
TV Sticks supporting digital television broadcasts have recently become available; a tuner displaying an HDTV image on a computer monitor is typically much cheaper than a dedicated high-definition television system, but with a smaller physical screen. Broadcasts can also be digitally recorded by the computer for later replay (or, illegal in many countries, distribution to other computer users).