said by b10010011:Yeah, there are PC tuner cards that can use a cable card and they would allow your PC to receive every channel a set top box does.
Bu they are only single tuner cards, so like in the picture you would need multiple cards to record multiple channels at the same time
So in reality a lifetime subscribed Tivo-HD is a more cost effective solution than a media center PC for a DVR.
That's changing. It used to be that you could only get a Cablecard tuner as part of a whole new PC from HP and others. Now Cablelabs loosened the restrictions so that you can pop a cablecard tuner into any old PC.