how to turn my computer into a TV

[Dieter BSD]

user.vdr writes:
> Recording doesn't require any compression unless you are transcoding
> in real-time. There's no difference between recording ATSC, NTSC, PAL,
> etc, and it's actually irrelevant what the stream is.

This is incorrect.  ATSC is compressed before broadcast, so
you receive the data already compresed.  NTSC and PAL are
broadcast in analog.  The tuner performs A-to-D which gives
an uncompressed data stream.  Have fun trying to store that.
As a practical matter, you have to compress the data in real time.
Some, not all, tuners include hardware compression.

> Lastly, it's possible to save a single channel or the entire stream
> which usually contains several channels. Even when saving the full
> stream, it likely uses far less bandwidth than your media offers so
> there's no problem there.

This appariently refers to ATSC.  Yes, modern disks have plenty
of bandwidth to store the entire ATSC stream.  The main reason
to filter PIDs is to save disk *space*.  Also, some software
can't select which program to decode.

Wojciech writes:
> most people vastly underestimate power of modern CPUs.

Many people overestimate the "moderness" of most people's CPUs.