well i didn't know if you needed access to satellite or whatever.

Well the good news is that vista comes with a media center built in and all you'll really need to get is a decent tv-capture card.

Something like this (http://ple.com.au/?p=snapshot&inventory_id=36691) would be perfect as it seamlessly integrates into the media center but any tv-capture care that can receive digital tv (DVB-T) would probably work as well.