Randomness and TV cards

Do any of you have TV cards in their computers? And if so can you interface with it using a programming language?

I was wondering this because if this is possible then you could create a truly random random number generator (RNG).

Tune the card out of any TV stations so you get white noise and then use a few bytes of the signal as a seed value for whichever random number generator you use.

As you can tell I am too hot to do any work and I'm bored. Just wondered if TV cards can be controlled by 3rd party software.

It won't be truly random. But it will be distributed over a range good enough for your apps. The point though, is that nothing is ever truly random.

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Originally Posted by mendhak

It won't be truly random. But it will be distributed over a range good enough for your apps. The point though, is that nothing is ever truly random.

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I find random girls.....*true*

White Noise on a tv set is 20% cosmic radiation signals, easily enough to base a seed value on. It would probably be better than using radioactive decay seeding.

white noise hunts you

You know those PCMCIA TV cards you can get, do you still need a separate arial for them or what?

I saw "White Noise" the other night. It wasn't bad, dealt with the dead communicating with the living. Had a couple of good scenes in it.
The volume levels were terrible, though, except in the thrill scenes.

I'm sure I woke a few folks up, as I had to have the volume at 30 to hear the dialog, as opposed to 24 on normal movies in the middle of the night.

I dont know of any third party interaction but it must be possible in some way. You always need an arial for them :)

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Originally Posted by wossname

You know those PCMCIA TV cards you can get, do you still need a separate arial for them or what?

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Yup ;)

I have a PCI TV Tuner. Wish it was digital though :(

To interface with them yuo need to tune it to a random frequency and capture the video stream yourself.