Options for Getting TV on a Laptop

Reader Marty writes: By summer's end I will be off to college, and while customizing a possible notebook for my first year, I came across the option to add on an external TV tuner card. My current PC has a built in tuner and I find it to be very useful. My question is, are there any affordable notebooks out there (priced under $1,500) with built in TV cards?

For those not in the know, a laptop TV tuner works just like a standard TV: You just attach a coaxial cable to the laptop (sometimes with a dongle to convert between coaxial and a custom connector), and then use special software (often Windows Media Center) to watch regular old TV on your laptop. You can typically use the laptop as a TiVo-like DVR, recording shows on the laptops hard drive, and watching them later, whether you're connected to the coaxial cable or not. Nice, especially if you don't have room for a standalone TV. 

So, with that in mind, I polled just about every laptop vendor I work with to inquire as to whether they offered a cheap notebook with a TV tuner built in. The answer: No one had one. None.

I was shocked, but the good folks at Fujitsu offered some specifics as to why this is: The demand just isn't there to justify making them standard, the tuners take up a lot of space and add a good amount of weight, and they're expensive to the manufacturers: TV tuners, says Fujitsu, are saddled with hefty import duties, which racks up the price of your laptop. That's why you pretty much only find them now in pricier, 17-inch and larger laptops.

Instead, everyone said what you've probably already figured out: Add an external TV tuner, preferably an ExpressCard model that you can leave plugged in all the time and won't add a lot of bulk to the package like a USB tuner will. Many such cards exist, but you should start with the one offered from the vendor who's selling you your notebook: You'll experience fewer incompatibility problems. Third-party cards are also readily available if you already have a notebook. Expect to pay $80 to $150. (I haven't personally tested any of these, so I can't offer a recommendation on a model, alas. However I've seen a lot of comments that say they're all pretty much the same, so I'd shop based on price, first. Try this AVerMedia AVerTV Hybrid, which gets rave reviews.) Good luck!