Watching satellite TV on your PC.. a reality or a pipe dream?

You may or may not know that you can plug a lead from your satellite receiver to your PC, and voila! satellite TV on your PC!
as long as you have a USB port on your computer you can make this work..
almost any new PC has more than a couple of sub port..heck, your printer or your mouse is probably connected to one right now!
you should know that there are 2 types of USB connections.
the old version 1.0 and 1.1, but what you need to connect a satellite TV or even hd TV is the never version of USB port , the 2.0.
this is a 40 times faster connection that opened up the PC to many new applications!
A few plug in satellite receivers do work with the older version, USB 1.0 but you should try to go with the newer 2.0 whenever you can for a higher performance..
don't worry, most of the computers and laptops released the last few years support the version 2.0 for USB.

however, just having a USB version 2.0 is not quite enough to connect to a satellite TV receiver, but the rest of the requirements are quite modest, and if you already have a computer with a 2.0 USB port the odds are your PC easily covers the rest of the specifications..
you should have

Microsoft® Windows® XP or higher
Microsoft® Windows® Media Player 9.0 or later
Microsoft® DirectX9.0C or later
A VGA card with at least 32MB memory
P4 2G MHZ CPU or above
256MB RAM or above
AT least One free USB 2.0 port as discussed earlier :-)
A Sound card or an on board sound chip

Of course you also need to already have a satellite dish and LNB as well as a
USB satellite TV receiver with DVB-S.
a professional should be the one that installs your dish and LNB.

However, if you think the above is to much of a hassle, and you would like to test
out a completely new way of watching satellite TV on your PC via the Internet instead of a satellite dish, check out our tests of the newest software on the market that turns your PC in a Satellite TV with over 3000 channels in less than 30 minutes, with no installations, no technicians and now monthly fees. just a one time fee and a good Internet connection.