My noob friend wants to put a computer in his room. As his room is very small he asked me if its possible to shift the tv out of his room n put the pc in its place with a tv tuner card. His question is whether it is practical and feasible to use the pc as a tv.
Is the image quality good and do we get a remote with the card which can control the volume and the channels.
sure thing dude..
my frnd recently did this thing and he is happy with the new PC-TV in his room..
Nearly all the tuner cards are offering the remote now..
Few things which needs to be taken into account :
Ensure the card to be of a decent performance level
The room shd hv good ventilation .. as in to take care of the heat .. we all kno hw cold outside it is
Speakers shd be decent .
(believe me .. it makes a REAL difference in the longer run)
The oh so many LEDs can be a factor which mite come in to play wen watchin wid all the lights turned off
Just in case the quality of image is not up to the mark .. one wil be required to ask the cable guy to fine tune/boost the channel upto the
mark
Lets see wot more suggestions are popped for u .. 
@hacker,
get ur friend a pinnacle PCTVpro card. comes with a remote. good picture quality, obviously it depends on the quality of signal u get. i have been using it for 2 yrs now and i am quite satisfied with its performance.
cha.
yup…instead of going for some frontech/intex parts..add some money & go for a good brand like Pinnacle…but dont expect it to run in X64 platform… . . . . like others’ suggested cooling is a proority…
errr.. dude .. the name is spacey.. short for spacescreamer.. 
Make sure his cable provider doesn’t require using a set top box. If it does, the tuner will be 99% useless. The one TV tuner I’ve used wouldn’t display what’s coming through the video inputs like they display tv channels, it could only capture through them. The only other issue I had with the tuner was a noticeable lag when switching channels which got irritating really fast. But there are advantages as well, like recording, timeshifting, displaying a programme guide etc.
If your friend is the only person in that room, it will be very practical. He can even watch TV in a small window while he works on a document or something. If there’s more than one person there might be friction since only one can use the computer at time whether it is to use normally or for watching TV.
Thx guys will go to lamington road in a couple of days and check out the pinnacle card.
@ephemera - he doesnt have a set top box.
earlier ppl used to suggest compro videomate..and pinnacle…no idea why not know…go for anything but not asus one they suk big time
If you still haven’t bought the card..
Anand_A has the Pinnacle PCTV PRO TV tuner card for Rs. 2.5k to Rs. 2.75k
U can just PM him.
http://www.techenclave.com/forums/fs-pinnacle-pctv-pro-71900.html