how to turn my computer into a TV

[Wojciech Puchar]

>
> An old Pentium 4 3ghz can decode HD with plenty of cpu resources to
> spare so unless a person using something older than that, they've
> certainly got "modern" cpu power.

actually even intel atom D525 is OK if decoder can be multithreaded.

As for analog streams older PCI based TV cards are still useful for 
converting VHS tapes. realtime encoding of PAL/SECAM input is too - 
trivial for todays CPU.