I remember fighting an old media TV card trying to get it to work with MythTV and Knoppix but well, that never worked so I kept Windows XP and would watch TV, record it, etc on my computer. For years that was my television. Had basic DVR functionality (without paying a monthly fee) and I could record radio (only in mono though).

I still have hundreds of shows I recorded using that setup. Many are Video CD while I eventually upgraded to DVD I still recorded in Video CD format (size and such was a concern). This was partly because the TV tuner card could only get something like Standard Definition (it could not even do DVD quality). I would set the bitrate as high as it would go then use VirtualDub to drop the overall file size down a bit.

Fun times.