On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 08:54:08 -0400, George
wrote:

a big hard drive, and imagine I need some sort of card, and some
software (not sure what)?
I can sort is see using my DTV converter box as the tuner, but not
sure how to connect it to the PC. Yea, I'd only get one program at a
time with the DTV box, but that's plenty.


You are missing most of the goodness of a DVR if you do what you are
describing.

Yea, but I cant get the service to use a commercial DVR because I cant
get cable tv. Rural areas like mine dont have cable, and SatTV is
just too expensive. We cant get any internet except dialup either.

DVRs are one of those things you could spend hours explaining to someone
and they still don't get it or you show them how it works and they say
"I want one". Maybe ask a friend for a demo?

I'd like to see one in action. I dont know anyone who has one.
Everyone I know still uses a Vcr.

I built my first one maybe 9 years ago and no one could get how it
worked until I showed it to them. I then built a number of them for
friends. At that time there wasn't much to pick from commercially.

I'd like to see a blowup of what you built.

What I'm most interested in doing, is just recording a movie off the
air, or saving something off the news, such as when a tornado did
severe damage in a nearby town in June, I now have a video tape with 5
minutes of news on it. Really what I want most is just a digital
"VCR", something to record to in digital format, and where I can edit
it, out the commercials or parts I dont want, and maybe save it to
DVD, or turn a few minutes of tv news coverage into a youtube (like)
sort of video.

I'm sure an actual DVR can do a lot more and the weblinks posted on
some replies from this thread showed me what it can do, but none of
that will work off my antenna, and I could not justify the cost of the
service even if I could get cable.