Things You Never Knew...

Since I now have cable tv, and have way too much viewable programming than I know what to do with, I decided to see what, exactly I could do with it. The original germ of an idea came to me around 5 a.m-ish a couple of days ago, right before Didier Drogba equalized for Chelsea at the Nou Camp. But that's another story. My thought was - this is great, but it would be even greater if I could watch it in the comfort of my room. Or even better, huddled up in bed! My couch and tv are nice and all, but in some situations comfort > a great viewing experience.

So. How can I get my cable tv signal to the computer in my room? Or a laptop? (For the technically unitiated, I will try to keep this next bit as idiot-proof as possible) Here's how I'm (trying to) do it.

Starhub cable tv box
TO video cable connected to a TV tuner card
IN A computer which also works as a streaming video server
WHICH streams the video across my home network
RIGHT to my laptop which recieves it as a windows media streaming video.

Except that right now, I'm stuck between step TO and IN A, cause I can't get windows to recognize the starhub set top box. Watching one channel is nice, but it sorta kinda sucks when you cannot channel surf. Grr. I'm about to tear my hair out.

WHY DOES WINDOWS MEDIA CENTER HATE ME SO!?!?