Recording TV to a PC without a TV Card

Thebestmumalive

My DVD recorder has finally died and as I have a spare, old PC I wondered if it is possible to use that to record direct from the TV. It doesn't have a TV Tuner card or Windows Media Centre. Its OS is Windows XP Professional.

Can anyone help with this?

GeoffX

I use Freeview USB tuners. They look like a memory stick, and you plug one end into the PC and the other to the aerial. You can get them for between about £10 and £25. I have two, with my preferred one being a Twinhan dual tuner bought from Maplin a couple of years ago when it was on sale for £25.

The software that comes with them seems to generally be terrible. There are a number of free and paid-for programmes; For both watching and recording I'd recommend DVB Viewer which costs €15.

Freeview is broadcast on six 'multiplexes'. Each multiplex contains a number of TV and radio stations. With DVB Viewer you can record any number of stations on a multiplex. It'll also record more than one multiplex at a time if you have multiple tuners ( one tuner can access one multiplex at a time). So, for instance with my Twinhan dual tuner I could record BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC News, ITV1, C4, Five, More4 and a number of others, all at the same time.

There are other pieces of software such as ProgDVB, MediaPortal and GB-PVR, but I think DVB Viewer is far superior to all of them.

Thebestmumalive

Thanks Geoffx,
I hadn't even thought of the USB tuners - I'll have a look for a dual one now.