using my PC as a digital video recorder

[WindyGeorge]

My system is an [HP Pavilion a1730n]AMD 64 x2 4600+ with 4 gig ram (Vista
only sees 3 gig) lots of hard drive space with Vista Home premium. It all
works quite well. I'd like to use the hard drive space to record TV for
later watching, as a personal video recorder. Presently I use an Xtv2.0 USB
box to convert a composite video signal to an MPEG4 file on the hard drive,
this works as advertized, very well. It is with the playback that I would
love to see major improvements. The Vista Media center will of course play
the recorded videback on my monitor but I would much prefer to play it back
on our TV set by reproducing a composite vider signal and run that back ti
the TV set.

The video card is a 512 megabyte NVIDIA GT7300 with two LCD 19" displays
attached. I do not wish to give up the second display or be plugging or
un-plugging cables to make this function properly. I've been looking for a
reliable device that would, with its software, generate the composite video
signal.

Any suggestions about how this might be done painlessly would be
appreciated. I was wondering about a PCI [no PCI express slots available]
video card with TV out? Thanks for your thoughts.

Windy George

 

[Gary Mount]

You could use a Media Center Extender such as the XBOX 360.

 

[That Guy]

Use xbox 360 to stream to tv.