WinTV-Express
Actually the technology to turn your PC into a TV tuner has been around for quite a while now. Hauppauge’s WinTV-Express, for example slips inside your PC and can provide either TV in a window at any size up to full screen from 16 channels using Windows® 98/Me/2000/XP Plug & Play for easy installation.
WinTVExpress also provides video movie capture in Microsoft AVI file format, from TV or any video source. Better still it’s cheap as chips.
Not much more expensive is WinTV-PVR-250. This is a single slot board for your PC with a 125 channel cable ready TV tuner, composite/s-video and audio inputs (to connect to VCR or camcorders), high quality MPEG-2 video and audio encoder, dbx-TV stereo decoder (for great TV sound), infra red remote control and bundled software including WinTV2000 (for TV watching and recording), MPEG editor, TV scheduler and DVD/VCD/SVCD (for authoring and burning software).
In short WinTV-PVR-250 allows you to watch, record and even pause live TV as well as burn your favourite shows onto CD Rom or DVD.
Power Mac G5
If you belong to the other great computer religion, Apple Mac, you will doubtless already be aware of the possibilities of the Power Mac G5, and a giant 30" Apple Cinema HD display. The display boasts an amazing 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution, and that oh so savvy ultra slim lined aluminium design that revolutionised the look of home computers and made them perfectly stylish and acceptable as both utility and display items. Just like everyone’s favourite iPods the screen are Mac and Windows PC compatible with direct connectivity to PowerBooks. For the space conscious they also come in 20" and 23" versions.
