How would you go about recording a digital broadcast from your satilites tuner to a laptop?

Is the HD music system part of the laptop or a separate device?
If it’s in the laptop, you can use any of several recording tools that will record anything playing through the soundcard. I have used RecordAnything(http://www.iburn.net/recorder-mp3.html) with great success in the very recent past.

Now if the HD music system is not part of the laptop then you’ve got some work to do. You’ll need to tell us more about the devices involved. Like does the laptop have any inputs for sound? like a line-in. What outputs are on the HD music system?

recording audio or video?

I would like to record video. The laptop has USB inputs and a microphone input The microphone input is like an iPod headphone jack.

Oh that’s very easy. Very simply all you need is a USB capture card that supports HD. You install some software to support the capture card. You hook your sources from your sat tuner box to the USB capture card and your laptop becomes like a DVR/TV.

Now which capture card to choose is a tough one. Pinnacle makes good stuff, but I have no personal experience.

sounds good in theory but what about DRM issues on digital HD? I heard that at least HDMI cables have some sort of security dingle on them.

@teknolust: do you know of any USB capture cards that can bypass this? You mentioned pinnacle.

@ gooch: forgive the questions but I have to ask to clarify-what direction is the video going from-is it originating on the laptop a d transferring to DVR? Or is it the other way around?

BTW anyone here have a slingbox?

Really good point about the HDCP DRM in HDMI. I dunno there. I have no real experience with the latest capture cards. I suppose the OP could try to use Component or DVI w audio as well, really all depends on what the hd receiver will send out and what the capture card will take in.

from sat. receiver to laptop is the direction. I want to record to my hard drive