Decent QAM card which is often on sale cheap.

I got this really cheap, around 60 bucks at Circuit City six months ago. The usual price is quite high though when not on sale.

A lot of the details have been covered in the other review before mine. The simple things people often want to know are whether it works with Media Center and can it get HDTV etc.

Generally speaking the better current TV tuner cards get basic analog stations and QAM HDTV via the tuner on the card. If you plug in a wire from the wall thats what you get, the basic 1-125 analog channels and QAM. What HDTV stations you get depends on what is unencrypted in your region. Some regions get lots of unencrypted channels while others dont get very many. My region gets a small hodge podge of HDTV channels with QAM.

You can also get ATSC or over-the-air HDTV which generally consists of usually the networks and a few other stations like PBS depending on your area and you have to use an antenna with the card.

With the above you use the terrible software that comes with it which can use the remote that also comes with it.
There are also alternative software that can get the analog, ATSC and QAM channels such as the free GB-PVR as well as Sage and BeyondTV which you have to pay for. With GB-PVR theres the problem of finding a source for channel scheduling data. This used to be free from ZAP2IT but they don't allow free usage anymore. There is a new low cost alternative that was started up to fill the gap which is I think 20 a year called Schedule Direct.

With Media Center you get free scheduling information and one of the best interfaces in existence. If you use Media Center you dont need any other software. It comes as part of Vista Premium and Ultimate. Unfortunately you need a Media Center compatible remote control which you can buy at many places online. With MC you either get analog channels, ATSC or with a cable box, everything except HDTV and PPV and premium channels.

A few cards/boxes can potentially get QAM too within MC including HDHOMERUN, Avermedia and finally supposedly some Hauppauge cards. They came out with a beta QAM driver for MC which I havent been able to get to work. Media Center only works with cards with hardware compression, like the Hauppauge and most of the newer cards.

So how do you get the non-QAM HDTV channels? The best way to the get the most channels and features in cable is to get a special media center PC with a cable card interface. You have to buy the entire PC as they dont sell it separately. A cable card still doesnt get you PPV and other features that require two way communication until a newer version comes out.

By using the composite input instead of the coax input you can record any show except HDTV. You can record QAM and ATSC HDTV with the coax in.