Why, you ask? It turns out that Media Center won't accept a feed from a device that isn't spitting out it's source from a controller box of some type or antennae. Like the ones used for cable, satellite or a direct from the sky. Forget your auxiliary input for a gaming console.

After a couple of hours and a null progress report I picked up the keys and went over to Tiger Direct and picked up an AVerTV Cardbus E501 for my laptop . . . initially I was thinking PCI card but something that was portable would be cooler.

This is what I get for trying to be cool.

Two hours after arriving home with the card and following the installation directions to the letter, uninstalling the drivers (just like the directions say), rebooting, downloading new drivers, installing new drivers, rebooting, installing capture software, rebooting, opening software for this error "The TV capture device drivers are installed incorrectly" . . . WTF, again? See, my laptop is also running XP Media Center Edition.

You get the idea. From the pic above I am sure that you can see that I got the card working but here's what it took:

1. 1) Searching for AVerTV Cardbus and finding out that it won't work with Media Center and their is a special card for this, not mine
2. 2) Doing the uninstall, reboot, reinstall thing a couple more times
3. 3) I try the last thing that might work, install the drivers for the AVerTV Cardbus MCE
4. 4) It worked