Recording TV to PCs & playing back on large monitors

[flexible]

I purchased a HP Pavillion Media PC two years ago and have yet to use it to record television. It has a HDMI port but I am not sure if I am supposed to use the USB port. I got it a Costco & it came with lots of cords but I am not certain which might work best.

For the past 20 years up to 2006, my husband put a large satellite dish on the roof of the timeshares in Mexico. It had to be a at least a 38 inch dish to reach the US Satelites from Mazatlan. It was harder to reach the US Satellites from Puerto Vallarta.

We are debating making a case to take our 45 inch plasma TV for this season. We will primarily be at 3 resorts for 6 months.

My husband leans toward the idea of buying a large screen monitor at the Costco or Sam's Club in Puerto Vallarta and plugging it into the TVs at Mayan and Velas. He has macular degeneration and the TVs in the TS aren't that great.

Either way we are figuring it is too much trouble to bring an extra satellite dish back to Mexico. (We used to leave it there but brought it home in 2007).

My husband favorite channel is Fox News which we hope Mayan & Velas will have. My thought is that if I can record some TV programs in advance it might be nice to watch in Mexico. I don't have too much time to watch TV when I am in the US.

Is anyone having success recording TV to their laptops? Or is it just simpler to record to DVD players?

THANKS for any advice.

[vintner]

If you a planning on recording TV shows, don't screw around with a computer, use the equipment designed to record and play TV shows. I think you should find a DVD recorder.

[LynnW]

We have a Panasonic DVD player which records on a hard drive. We can then copy these recordings onto a disc which we take with us. If there is no DVD player in the unit and the TV has the proper connections we can play them through the laptop. I don't know what connections are needed as my only job is to copy the recordings to disc! DH looks after the rest.

Lynn