I've recently moved into an apartment that provides cable TV. Since the apartment complex doesn't seem inclined to shut off the service and give me a discount, I'd like to take advantage of it...and rather than buy a television, I thought a TV tuner card would be a good idea and provide me with more functionality. Unfortunately for me, I don't know a thing about TV or video broadcasts, and I'm afraid of buying something overpriced, incompatible, or both. Basically I'd like a PCI card I can put in my desktop system (Gentoo) that can connect to the coax port in the wall and allow me to watch TV on the computer. Anything else is bonus; I've already got an nVidia card (FX 5500) handling the VGA monitor. What would be best to buy in this situation?

http://www.linuxtv.org/v4lwiki/index.php/List_survey_of_cards_in_use_now check out the rest of that site for more info.You also might want to look into a dtv/ota hdtv card such as the pchdtv to get over the air digital broadcasts.