Cable TV viewed on a laptop, what do I need?

[eaglescouter]

A friend bought a Dell E1405 laptop. Now he wants to watch Cable Television on the laptop.

Question: What hardware/software does he need to acquire for this project?

Note: Disabled elderly person with limited mobility and no technical skills, so easy to use is an important feature.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Jon]

I'd stay away from USB models unless it's an external (not one of the thumbdrive tuners) with onboard encoding. The pure software models typically have lockup and audio/video sync issues and are just junk. If a decent PCMCIA tuner can be found then that is probably what I would do for simplicity's sake (no extra power cords and such). The only problem is that I don't know if PCMCIA models have built-in encoding.

Software usually comes with tuners, but depending on what it is, it may be junk.

I can't really recommend a specific tuner since I've never had to deal with USB/PCMCIA types, but that should narrow it down a bit. Also, you get what you pay for in these things.

 

[blkdiamond]

I would check into a Slingbox. The big advantage is that you can view the TV on any computer on your network, and over the internet. I just bought one and it works great on both my wired computers and my wireless laptops.

 

[Jon]

I would check into a Slingbox. The big advantage is that you can view the TV on any computer on your network, and over the internet. I just bought one and it works great on both my wired computers and my wireless laptops.

Forgot about those. That's probably what I would do too, now that you mention it. No extra hardware hanging off the laptop and a simple media player is all that he'll need to deal with.