Will this work?

[jackbulloch]

I live in a house where I have broadband internet and cable tv through a local provider. I have a condo in another community where I intend on living on a part time basis. I am reluctant to pay for tv cable fees for both locations. What I would like to do is record tv programs at one location on my laptop then play them back at the condo location at a later date. The house has windows xp sp2 and my laptop is vista basic. I dont mind hooking the laptop up to the existing cable and then record and then bring it down to the condo. The laptop is a toshiba satellite with a D connection, S Video out and an express card 54mm connector. I am about to purchase a Hauppage digital media receiver model 1000 , a toshiba 500 gig portable hard drive and a hauupage wintv hvr 1500 notebook express card hdtv tuner video recorder media centre. Before I press the buy button does the equipment sound right? Will it work?

[mvallevand]

How does the MVP (Hauppage digital media receiver model 1000) fit into this?

Martin

[jackbulloch]

It would allow me to use the remote instead of having to fiddle with the laptop. It would also give me more latitude as to where the laptop was situated but not too sure if this is really a major issue.

[pBS]

get a usb mce remote n dongle and just use the laptop..it'll be more responsive and get a longer cable to allow for better placement of laptop..
that is, if your laptop has enough video power to play decently..

there's also a small hard drive device with hidef outs and remote that is as small as a portable 2.5" hard drive...almost pocketsized..
can't run gpvr on it but it does play video files nicely..
[search for 'portable 2.5 media player']
much like a portable nmt without networking..[sigma chip]

[jackbulloch]

Thank you very much for your advice I am now looking at a Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player coupled with a 500 gig portable hard drive. That gets me the files to the TV. Still not sure about recording the programs to the hd. I have looked at usb mce remotes for vista and all are compatible with windows media centre, which i do not have. Perhaps I should bypass the laptop altogether and record the programs directly to my pc with xp storing them on a portable hd. I do have an older version of nero which has their version (untried) of a media centre. Would gpvr capture the video siganls if I installed it on my pc? If so I would still neet a card for the cable connection. Unfortunately I am presently sitting in a small town in Germany and do not have access to my pc so am unable to try this out.