I've got as many televisions in my house as people, it seems, but they're still never where they need to be. And with HDTV and digital cable, the programs for grown-ups are often tied to just one TV set in the house. Leave the family room, and you're in the land of basic cable.
If you're stuck in television purgatory while your kids commandeer the family room for the latest XBox 360 game, you can now get your cable fix anywhere in the house—or even away from home. And you can get it on your computer, or even your Apple iPad, iPhone, or iPod.
Hauppauge, which makes TV tuner cards and plug-in tuner boxes for PCs, has just released WinTV 7.2, software for Windows that turns a PC into an Internet remote control and broadcast station for your television. Using a WinTV-HVR TV tuner to connect your computer to your cable set-top box, the software can control the channel that your cable box is tuned to, and converts the picture into video that can be watched in a web browser. If you have your home network set up right, you can even reach the video over the Internet—provided you have enough throughput between your home network and wherever you're connecting to.
As great as this is, it's not exactly an easy task to set up. But given the fact that you'll never be stuck watching reruns on basic cable instead of that premium cable movie, the learning curve is worth it. Just tell your teenagers they need to help you get it set up so they can have that all-night HALO-fest on the XBox.