NTSC LCD with Sage in Germany?

[kuch68]

Ok, there is the possibility I might be shipped overseas for a couple years to Germany. I have already looked through my power supply and I know I can convert it to a 240V input. I believe the same is for my dell lcd monitor.
However, my question is whether or not I could subscribe to a german satelllite service (germansky tv) which I would assume comes in PAL. Can I use my HTPC and sage to convert the incoming PAL signal and then output through a dvi to an LCD tv? What tv tuner card would work for germansky tv, does it just need composite input or a standard us coax jack?
If so, I get a electronic allowance and I could use it to buy a NTSC that will be useable when I get back. Any help would be appreciated.

thanks
Josh

[potpiejimmy]

Hi Josh,

you don't have to worry about PAL or NTSC as long as everything is digital All software media players (and Sage, too) support playback/decoding of both PAL-based and NTSC-based digital data, it doesn't really make any difference. You're not going to have any analog video connections, do you? And the LCDs are all the same, no matter where you buy them.

The problem is: You need a digital receiver that can be used with Sage, and this is where it starts to get complicated ;-) In Europe, you need a DVB tuner card (or a DVB set-top-box), and as far as I know, none of those devices will work in the U.S. when you return.

Oh, and in your case, if you really want Sky (which actually means you're hooking up to a British satellite and pay for the Sky subscription – pretty expensive, by the way ), then there are not too many options left – I'm not sure, but I think you need an external sky-box, no way to get it to work with a PCI card (I think, please don't pin me down on this). I also doubt it's possible to get the digital data from the sky-box You could connect the sky-box to the S-Video input of your PVR-150, though. That would work, of course.

Hope that helped a little