Recording digital TV on laptop

mark2006

Does anyone have any ideas how I can use my laptop to record TV. I'm living in a hotel room at the moment with a TV that shows channels from a freeview digibox. I can't connect the laptop directly to the digibox.

Is it possible to somehow connect the coaxial cable to the laptop or maybe connect the TV to the laptop, the TV has audio and video-in connections and a scart connection. My laptop has no video-in connection but it does have an s-video-out connection which I use to watch dvd's from my laptop(IBM T21) on TV.

I've read that you can use a tv tuner card but I'm not sure if I need one.

Any help, thanks!

Topper

You say there is a standard freeview digibox in the room, do you mean DVB-T box or do you mean a skybox with a freeview card. As it is a hotel is there not a hotel feed supplying all the rooms or is yours a seperate set up.
If the aerial is standard terrestrial I would say your best bet is a USB freeview DVB-T stick e.g. a Freecom, only about £30 this will allow you to record programmes on your laptop but you need a good terrestrial aerial feed as the portable aerial is extremely poor but as I say it depends on what you have already got in there.

Here is a good thread to read

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mark2006

Thanks Topper, it's a DVB-T box hotel feed supplying all the rooms.
Will I be able to use the Freecom USB stick even though the signal I'll be connecting to is already coming from a digibox?

Also my laptop only has the old type of USB, not USB 2.0. Will that make any difference?

Thanks.

2cvbloke

You may experience some stuttering depending on the USB adaptor, but generally most USB2.0 TV devices are backwards compatible with USB1.1...

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Topper

Well if there is an IF feed out of the box then I see no reason why not if it is already providing a digital terrestrial freeview signal
Yes a factor of 40 times less speed which could manifest itself in many ways but more than likely visual interuptions. You really need USB2 for effective recording and playback via this method.

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