Hardware problem: Help request: connect a tuner to a laptop

My TV tuner/recorder/DVD player combo feeds into an HDTV projector, which I only watch at night. That’s great, since the room is far too bright to see anything from the projector during the day. The problem is when I want to program the tuner in the daytime.

My question is how can I connect the output of the tuner (it has HDMI, composite, component, Svideo and antenna out) to the laptop which is right there so I can use the laptop’s screen to see the program menu?

With all the bright, creative and tech savvy people on this forum, I’m hoping someone can suggest a solution.

You could use a USB tv tuner stick, just check that it has the right input socket for you; I guess that most of them have antenna-in to connect an external aerial.

Sláinte

midders

For the laptop, you will need some sort of capture device to connect any video source to it. As your combo unit has composite output, you can pick up a USB capture device reasonably cheap. While these are intended for capturing video such as transferring analogue camcorder footage to the PC, the software will show the video live, so you'll able to see the menus from your combo unit as you navigate them to set up schedule recordings, look at the EPG, etc.

If you're just interested in watching TV or the EPG on your laptop and don't plan watching or scheduling recordings on your combo unit during the day, a USB TV tuner would be your best option, as midders suggested.