Once it's had a few days to record stuff you like, you'll try and avoid reccording live shows because comerical skip doesn't work well on live shows. I've been meaning to split my cable into my TV seperatly for 6 months, but have never gotten around to it.

DVarchive is great. The page you don't even know you're looking for yet is http://users.rcn.com/mmacdonald31/xinedvarch/xinedvarch.html which will help you get streaming to your computer working right. I wish it'd work on windows media player, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Matthew