Q: My computer has a TV tuner card and I am looking for a way to record TV shows using the tuner and then transfer the latest episode to my iPod. I have no found no solution to do this. Any ideas?
– Eric
A: Exactly how this works is going to depend on the make and model of your TV tuner card and what software you are presently using to record TV shows.
The key question here is the format that these shows are recorded in, and any conversion options the software may have built-in.
For Mac users, Elgato’s EyeTV 3 (see our iLounge review) provides built-in functionality to automatically convert recorded content into an iPod and iTunes ready format on the fly. Unfortunately, although there are a number of TV recording applications available for Windows users, built-in options for iPod conversion are somewhat more limited.
This does not preclude you from manually converting these into an iPod-ready format using any number of tools currently available for plain video file conversion. The goal basically in this case is just to find or export the TV recording in its native format, and then run it through a conversion application such as Videora (http://www.videora.com) to produce an iPod-compatible version of the video.
You can find more information on the formats and display resolutions supported by the iPod and its related devices in our Complete Guide to iPod, Apple TV and iPhone Video Formats.