PCI-Mini Express TV Tuner?

[Gen. Assessment]

I have an Asus G2Sg laptop that I got last month. Normally I'm very good with computers and can figure out a problem and fix it myself, I've built a few computers in my day too, so I'm not new to this kind of stuff. Anyhow, here's my issue.

I'm going off to school in about a week (college) and I want to get a PCI Mini Express TV tuner for my laptop. I've read a lot of conflicting info on doing this, some saying that only certain cards will work or even only the card that Asus sells. I find this hard to believe but I dunno. There don't appear to be many PCI Mini Express TV Tuners out there either. I'm fairly certain that there is a way to connect the coaxial cable to the TV tuner but I'm not sure on that either.

If anyone can shed some light on this for me I'd much appreciate it. Having a TV on the laptop will save me some room in my dorm this year.

Thanks,
Marcus

[Briton]

As long as your computer meets the minimum specifications for the card, and a quick search shows no known issues with the card and your machine I would say you would be fine to go the route of either a mini pcie card or a usb tv tuner.

I would check to make sure it is compatible with the media center for vista or mce 2005 as well, but other than you'd probably be just fine. There's a lot of mixed reviews on a lot of TV tuners I've looked at and used that worked perfectly, make sure that you're subjective with reading them...some people just don't know how to make them work in the first place.

The ASUS laptops are phenomenal and great for expandability so I doubt they would lock it to only use their card (it would cost them money to do that lol).

[Gen. Assessment]

Originally Posted by Briton

As long as your computer meets the minimum specifications for the card, and a quick search shows no known issues with the card and your machine I would say you would be fine to go the route of either a mini pcie card or a usb tv tuner.

I would check to make sure it is compatible with the media center for vista or mce 2005 as well, but other than you'd probably be just fine. There's a lot of mixed reviews on a lot of TV tuners I've looked at and used that worked perfectly, make sure that you're subjective with reading them...some people just don't know how to make them work in the first place.

The ASUS laptops are phenomenal and great for expandability so I doubt they would lock it to only use their card (it would cost them money to do that lol).

Thank you very much Briton.

I'm not new to TV Tuners. I dropped one in a friends desktop and I have one in one of my desktops. I was strapped for cash so I got an ATI TV Wonder200, but it came with a free remote so it was a good deal. I'm not taking that desktop with me to college though, isn't enough space in my dorm.

I believe there is an antenna cable inside the space for the PCI Mini express card. I'm just wondering how I'm gonna get the signal from the coaxial cable to the TV tuner. Would also be nice if the tuner came with it's own player, I don't like the windows media center, I've always disabled it on my XP and Vista rigs.

BTW, I'm 30 minutes north of Boston