What You Need...
The best is to use a PVR ( personal video recorder) or sometimes referred to as DVR ( digital video recorder )
Either get a Tivo or turn your computer into one.
If you go the Tivo route you will need third party software to get the video off the tivo and into a format you can actually use.
TyStudio is a set of tools whose purpose is to allow one to easily and painlessly extract video streams from any tivo, and convert them to perfectly legal, industry standard video formats. Other features include editing video without having to extract it first, and automatic conversion of the audio format to be DVD and SVCD compliant as desired.
If you want to turn your computer into a pvr you will need...
A TV tuner card converts the standard TV signal your cable company sends you into a VGA signal the computer can understand. There are two options to chose from when looking for a PC TV tuner: a stand-alone tuner or one integrated into a video card.
Video cards such as ATI's All-in-Wonder or Matrox's Marvel G400-TV embed the TV tuner function into the card itself. Integrated TV tuner/video cards start at about $125 for a basic 16MB model and upwards of $300 for high-end consumer models.
For just $50 ($90 including the PCI TV-capture card you'll need if your system lacks a graphics card with a TV input; $120 with a remote control added), Snapstream Media's Personal Video Station 3 enables you to watch and record shows also. These cards work very well for the average user and combine everything into a package that uses a single slot in your computer.
Stand-alone solutions from companies such as Pinnacle Systems or Hauppauge cost between $80 and $100 and come in PCI card or USB formats. A stand-alone solution works with your current video card to display TV signals on your PC's display. A good reason for choosing a stand-alone solution is that later on, if you decide to upgrade your video card, you will not have to sacrifice a built-in tuner or limit yourself to purchasing another "combo" card.
How does watching TV on a PC compare to the real thing? Overall, the picture quality is good, but some fuzziness is noticeable when viewing at full screen. PCI tuner cards will give you better performance than USB models because of the USB port's limited bandwidth-- video uses lots of bandwidth.
USB TV tuners are easy to set up and do not require opening the computer to install a card. Typically speaking, PC TV tuners are cable-ready devices with all of the bells and whistles of a regular TV, including closed caption display and advanced channel scanning. TV tuners allow you to do some unique things such as save clips of video, usually in .avi or .mov formats.
Other things to remember when you turning the computer into a pvr. Working with video can be consuming on system resources. Be sure to have a fast processor, lots of memory and a big hard drive if you want to store a lot of video. The better quality the video, the more space it will take up.
