Dave wrote:
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
. ..
I believe I've seen USB HD tuners for around $50. It was just a few days
ago, but I don't remember where.


Even if you could find one, it wouldn't be a good idea. USB will be slow
and quirky, if used for a HD TV tuner. -Dave

I have a Hauppauge HVR 950 HD to PC USB device which works just fine,
under Linux even.

However, the amount of disk space to store the shows, and the CPU
required to play them, stretches my 160GB drive and Athlon XP 1900+ to
the very limit. It takes a lot of tricks even to downsample them to
720x480 and replay them on my TV in real time.

As a result I use a digital converter box bought for about $12 after the
coupon (which downconverts to NTSC in hardware) followed by a hardware
encoder (PVR 150) which works well.