Hey guys, I have a question that I'm not sure of the answer to. What I want to be able to do is for my wife to be able to record the TV shows she misses late at night because of our new born son.

First, I'll give you specs of my HTPC:
Antec NSK2480
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
Asus P5k-VM
ATI Radeon HD4350
3Gb of RAM
160GB HD
Windows 7 HP 32bit

My current setup is plugged into a Sharp Aquas 42" LCD TV via HDMI. This is used for my collection of movies that I stream from my WHS.

We also have Eastlink Digital Cable, just basic digital cable that goes from the cable box to the TV via Coax, no HD or PVR. I don't know if Eastlink encrypts their basic digital cable. I'm looking at something like http://www.amd.com/us/products/pctv/tv-wonder-tuners/Pages/tv-wonder-hd-650-combo-pci-express.aspx, and I was wondering if adding this will give me what I need, or if it won't, what will?

Thanks in advance.

Edit.) Forgot to mention I want to use 7 Media Center to do the recording.

A TV-Tuner, along with a good media center app like MythTV (excellent) will give you a very high quality, easy to use dvr system! Just make sure you have lots of HDD space and set your purging options (if any) to purge temp files as you no longer need them. Good luck!

Thanks Phonix but that doesn't really help me. I want to use 7 Media Center as its what my wife is familiar with, but I'm also still wondering if the card will actually do what I want with Eastlinks Digital cable. Has anyone else had a similar issue?

You'll be able to use 7's built in media centre just fine (it just won't have the features MythTV does). Eastlink does not encrypt the video as I know many using TV tuners with Eastlink cable.

Major brands are Hauppage and ATI. Make sure you buy one that is HD compatible for best quality.

I'm looking into buying the ATI TV Wonder HD 650 as linked to here http://www.amd.com/us/products/pctv/tv-wonder-tuners/Pages/tv-wonder-hd-650-combo-pci-express.aspx

So you're saying that this would work fine. I guess then that my next question would be how would the connections work? Currently i have coax from the wall to the cable box, and then another coax from the box to the tv. Would the coax that goes to the TV be moved to the tuner on the TV wonder? If thats the case I know that all tv watching would be done on the HTPC which shouldn't be a problem, just want to clarify before I drop any money.

That is a well rated card. With the dual tuner you can really figure out some cool combinations of inputs and design your media center the way you want it.

And yes, that is exactly how you would connect your cables. Media Center will also pick up your tuner no problem especially if its ATI or Hauppage.

Your biggest challenge is going to be configuring the settings to work for you, which really isn't that big of a deal, more trial and error. MS makes it easy anyways.

Oh, and unless you have a wireless keyboard/mouse, I highly suggest you pick up a media center remote.

Thanks for the reply. I have a wireless keyboard and remote already so that's not an issue.

What kind of troubles do you think I may encounter in terms of settings?

Resolution, Quality, compression just basic stuff not really something you'll have 'problems' with. Just gotta trial and error to get your best settings.

Gotcha. Thanks for the info Phonix

You could also get a coax splitter so that one cable would go to your TV and the other to you're HTPC. That way you're HTPC doesn't have to be on in order to watch TV.