swa66 - 9:29 am on May 9, 2009 (gmt 0)

Marcia,

The answers depend on where you live (from your profile I see USA)

What you seek is a "tv tuner" for your computer. They come in a number of different kinds. Looks like you seek an external device, hence a "USB TV tuner" or even "USB TV stick" would do the trick for you.

I'd suggest a trip to the local computer supermarket, they should have a small collection of this stuff, if the above search keywords don't help enough.

As to inputs: you want to hook it up to your cable and your satellite decoder.

The more expensive models are going to focus on either more inputs or either more hardware to turn your computer into a "tivo" without putting much strain on the computer's CPU (hardware mpeg encoding).

Top of the line models typically go for a firewire connection to the computer, overkill for what you seek to do.

In the US:
- Your digital free over the air tv is encoded using "ATSC"
- Your analog tv encoding is "NTSC"
- Cable (unencrypted) uses "clearQAM" I think

[Caveat: I don't live in the US]

If it covers those, you should be set.