Want to say goodbye to expensive cable or satellite TV bills and watch HDTV for free? You can pick up programs aired in high definition at no charge by turning your PC to HDTV receiver. You can convert your PC to an HDTV receiver in a couple of ways.

First, you can use an HDTV digital tuner. These are available as internal PCI-based tuner cards that you will install in your PC's PCI slots or external USB tuners that you simply plug into a USB port. Since both perform similarly, your choice of which to use when converting your PC to HDTV receiver boils down to the features and the kind of computer you will use it in.

If your computer is an older model with a weaker processor, for instance, you should use PCI tuner cards like the MyHD MDP-130. These cards process the HDTV output directly without using much of the computer's processor power. If you have a laptop, however, it is more convenient and better to use a USB tuner.

The other way to convert your PC to HDTV receiver is by using software that lets you receive satellite broadcasts from all over the globe. With these software packages, you can receive as many as 3,000 channels from stations in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin and North America.

When selecting your TV to PC software, the factors to consider include the price, number of channels available, the selection of foreign channels and the ease of navigating from channel to channel.

After you've made the decision on how to get your HDTV, you also need to invest in the appropriate hardware to watch high definition content. A definite must is to buy a bigger monitor for your PC. Your new monitor should have at least a 26-inch screen and a resolution of 1920X1200 to maximize your viewing of HDTV programs. And at the minimum, the monitor should also come with DVI as well as HDCP connections.

A sound card for your computer is another must to get the most out of the improved sound offered by HDTV programs, which are aired in Digital 5.1 surround sound. You can get sound cards as either external USB devices or internal PCI cards.

You can also record programs to your hard disk for later viewing after you've successfully installed your PC to HDTV tuner by using the Windows XP Media Center 2005 application. You can also burn HDTV programs onto DVD from your hard disk using this software application.

Unfortunately, many of these PC to TV software programs do not perform very well, in contrast to the way they are promoted. There is a general lack of good information or abundance of misinformation that causes confusion for someone wanting to download PC to TV software. I have researched the internet and sorted through this misinformation and confusion and came across this one site that I found very helpful....