TiVo

In order to save TV to your computer, and play it back with any sort of quality, you have to have a video capture device, with at least S-Video, if not DVI, support. That can be inboard, a video capture card, or outboard, connected via USB, for example, whichever suits your fancy. Inboard is best, IMHO, but to each his own. And, of course, you'll need an excellent soundcard. That out of the way, you're gonna need the software to tie it all together, and a helluva hard drive ... video files are humongous. You're gonna want la high performance processor and tons of RAM, too. Then, for decent playback, you've gotta have a very good video card and a superb monitor.

Now, actually, I've got all that, and I do video editing on a 'puter. However, once I've edited the material to what I want, I burn it right to DVD, or offload it to video tape, and get it off the hard drive. TVs generally make lousy computer monitors, and computers generally make lousy TV sets.

If your machine is older, it might be very worth your while to look into replacing it with one of the newer Media Center PC bundles everybody is offering now, instead of dumping money into upgrading your current machine. The Media Center PCs pretty much tie it all together for you.