Sorry for bugging computer savvy guys. I am using computer for internet, DVDs and word processing (but I am sophisticated guy:). I would want to watch tv on it (I will buy Dell LCD monitor soon). How good this computer should be? How good processor, video card? I have seen great deals on Sempron 3300+ barebones at Tigerdirect. It looks like this would fit my needs. But I am not sure about the requirements for tv (I do not want to be constraint here. Thaaanks.

Does it mean that I need to have a separate video card...with 256MB RAM etc. I can get it of course. Just wanted to make sure that the setup for tv is sort of similar to gaming computer.

I would say yes you need a seperate card, the one shown above is from ATI and I have an older one that performs well enough for me so I would assume they have only gotten better by now with upgrades, what you will have to decide is if your computer will have an AGP slot or a PCI-e slot and then go from there but I would also recomend ATI's All In Wonder card

I have been using my PC to watch TV for about two years now. I have a Hauppauge PVR150 card (now). They usually go for ~$100 but I got it on sale and with a rebate (thanks to B$) for $40. I have used the card in three different computers from a Dell PIII-600 with on board video card (probably 8mb or shared) to an AMD athlon 1.8 with a 128 mb video card to a Dual processor 2.4 something with a 32 mb video card. All three system were able to play and record live TV. My opinion is that using the proper TV input card can save lots of resources (and $). I believe the PVR150 card does all the decoding onboard thereby removing a lot of requirements from the processor. The recommended card above is a good card with excellent reviews (just couldn't justify the expense). There are a number of websites out there that cover this topic. Do a web search on "build your own PVR" and you will find tons of Info. I recommend the Hauppauge product lines - each one of there product I have used so far have been acceptable to great.

How to get HD content on your PC
Posted Feb 20th 2006 5:45PM by Evan Blass
Filed under: HDTV, Media PCs

Ben over at our "sister" blog HDBeat has posted a very thorough article concerning the various methods of acquiring HD content on your PC. The good news is that options exist for users of all three major operating systems to watch and record high-def programs, and new services are cropping up all the time to constantly expand the slate of offerings. PC owners today can pull HD signals directly to their machines with capture cards or USB peripherals; HDBeat recommends devices with MPEG-2 hardware encoding to ease the strain on your processor, and QAM support if you're piping in cable through Firewire from a STB (although many channels are encrypted and can be neither viewed nor captured). Another option is hacking your HDTiVo to open up it's USB 1.1 port for output, but this method is both slow and of questionable legality. Finally, the 'Beat shows you the software and codecs you'll need to watch all the HD swag that you accumulate with the best quality and performace.