The two fanciest editions of Windows Vista ­ – Home Premium and Ultimate ­ – include Media Center, which turns a home PC into an all-in-one digital TV and hard disk recorder.

This can be used to schedule recordings, pause live TV or record an entire series from start to finish with just a few mouse clicks. Remember that in order to use Windows Media Center to watch and record TV, a TV tuner is required.

For this Workshop, we used the WinTV Nova TD USB receiver with Freeview from Hauppauge. This comes with its own software but we didn’t install it, preferring to use Vista’s drivers and Media Center to control everything. In other words, the steps in this Workshop should apply to most PC TV tuners.

To see the gallery associated with this Workshop, click here.