Can I record TV on my laptop without a TV Tuner?

So I want to record TV onto my laptop. I have Rogers Digital Cable and a Toshiba laptop (Satellite A300 special Edition) running Windows Vista Home Premium with Windows Media Center. I says I need a TV tuner but after some research I learned that the cable box works as a tuner. Is this true?





If so, Im using an S-video cable to hook the box to my laptop and im plugging the audio cables into my microphone jack. Is this the configuration I need?





If that works, how to I set everything up to enable it to record, like how to I set up the path for the box to record to the laptop and do I need any software or anything for it?Can I record TV on my laptop without a TV Tuner?
If you have a set-top box you don't need a tuner, but you still need a video capture card (or USB dongle with video input). They are pretty cheap.





After you buy it, you can configure recording using windows media center or the s/w that will come with your video capture card.Can I record TV on my laptop without a TV Tuner?
Well, what I am not aware about your model is that whether you get satellite TV by default. If you do then i am sure the software for it will have the recording capability, and you might want to read the manual a little deep.





If you do not have a satellite TV built in then you might want a satellite TV connection and I would recommend one that comes with a recording and DVD/CD burning capability. Software based packages should be good for you. These are some of the ones that might work for you:





http://www.cwglive.com/SoftwareTVForPCRe鈥?/a>





A cable connection will not have its own recording capability so you might still want to plug in some software (unless your version of Windows Media Center is compatible with your cable connection).
As other answers have indicated, you will need a video capture or TV tuner card added in order to do this (the capability is not built in to your laptop). In the end, it's probably a lot easier just to get the show that you're looking for right off the Internet. Nearly any popular (and a lot of less popular) shows can be obtained using a torrent program such as utorrent (www.utorrent.com). The shows can be found using search sites such as mininova.org.