How does a TV tuner work?

How can I put to work a Hauppauge NTSC TV tuner in India(which uses the PAL system)?

• I brought the Happauge WINTV PVR PCI internal TV tuner from US for about 90$. Now I am in a fix how to use the TV tuner in India. The socket for cable line is different than used in India. Also will the NTSC system work in India if I somehow manage to buy a NTSC socket? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much. (10 points to the best answerer!)

• Answer:

  Towards the bottom of the product's page at Hauppage's web site you read this: "* The WinTV-PVR-pci has a TV tuner for either PAL or NTSC (specific to your region). Composite or S-Video inputs can be from either PAL or NTSC." That makes sense, since NTSC and PAL are incompatible with each other. What this means is that a card made for use in the USA, Japan or other countries that use the NTSC video system can only record NTSC video through the cable input. TO record directly from your cable television signal you'd need a European market card equipped with a PAL tuner. However, the card is able to record a PAL signal coming through the composite (one-jack yellow video like on old VCRs) or S-Video (5-pin higher-quality video jack) connectors. So, you can record things but only if you have a separate PAL tuner feeding the decoded video into the card. The cheapest and easiest way to do that is to simply use an old (or new) VCR. Connect the cable TV line into the VCR and then connect the VCR's video out to the composite input of the Hauppage card. Obviously, doing it that way you'd have to set recordings manually, but that's really the only way I can think of, since the card you bought was for the wrong video system. Sorry that's not much help but I didn't think that many people would answer your question... Good luck with it!