[hermann]

I recently had a VM basic triple bundle installed: phone line and broadband both installed in my front study, where the pc and master cordless phone hub live, with the Tv line installed in the living room at the other end of the house, umm, where the TV lives.

So, as I didn't want to pay the extra for a V+ box to record, & I'm basically a cheapscate, I asked the installer if it was possible for him to install another feed for TV into the hole where the BB & phone come into the study. Free, of course, as he was already there: just another foot of coax I thought, with a cheap tv socket glued to the wall.

The external brown master splitter box is right next to where the cables enter the study, btw.

My idea was to get a cheap TV tuner card for the pc & watch live TV on the PC ( oh, & incidentally record it if I wanted on the pc's half-terrabyte drive, but I didn't say this to him, of course.)

His response was, 'Sorry, that won't work, as all pc TV cards only take analogue signals, not a VM digital one'.

I didn't press the point, as I was too excited about having the other bits installed at the time, so just accepted this. He was otherwise perfectly frank & an excellent installer.

I haven't researched this too much, but it'd seem logical that if a very high spec pc can't take a digital input, there's something wrong!

Could anyone tell me if it's possible to feed a VM TV signal into a cheap, say Hauppage pc TV tuner card? Or is the signal scrambled?

I realise it's too late to have one installed now for free ( & of course I WOULDN'T DREAM of taking another feed from my external box myself! ), but would this work?

My idea was that I could watch or record programmes on the pc, burn them onto a DVD & watch them later on the DVD player in the living room? Or is there a more elegant and Extremely Cheap alternative?