Originally posted by: ViRGE
You have a couple different choices for TV Tuners. On the basic side, you have tuners like the Leadtek Winfast TV2000 XP Deluxe/Expert, which are quite litterally TV Tuners. You plug them in, install the included software, and you can watch and record TV. The only real limitations here is that video quality can be so-so(the high-definition quality of a monitor magnifies visual flaws, and the filter quality isn't great) on these low end cards, and they require some way to encode the video for storage, so it means you can't really be doing anything else besides recording/watching TV due to CPU concerns. Audio is usually routed through the line-in of your sound card too, so that can be a factor.
On the high end, you have cards like the Happuage WinTV PVR 250 series, which has all of the basic functions of the cards above, but also includes a hardware MPEG2 encoder, which negates the CPU concerns above(recording averages 1% usage). Among other things, these cards also feature better filters, which clean up the video a good deal on top of what the MPEG2 encoder cleans, and all audio is routed internally. These cards can also do time-shifting and other PVR tasks easily(think TiVo), which is another benefit. The software situation is a little tricker here, since what software you get depends on what card you buy, and what you want to do. A retail card will include Happuage's software, which does all the basics well, but it lacks the polish of a PVR setup, which is why people will often purchase bundles where they get the card and PVR software like BeyondTV or SageTV(AT has reviews of both applications).
Ultimately, what you decide to get it up to you of course, but you need to know what you want to do. If you want to be basic, get the low-end stuff, but if you want fancy, get the high-end stuff.
