I read the comment about the long time it takes people to capture a program and the heavy specs....(BIG HD, to capture half an hour of quality AVI). I had the same problem as well, but diggin' thru the web. I found the solution to this problem !! It is a program called WinVCR. This program records a stream (can be a program using a TV card or even a DVD (using a mpeg decoder card)) in REAL-TIME to your HD in the MPEG format !! And you don't need the best of the best hardware to do this !! It can capture MPEG in different qualities...from 0 to 20 (0 being the worst mpeg and 20 the best) I can capture it in quality 15 with my PII 333@400 Mhz. with 64 MB. And I must say the MPEG is quit clear.....especially if you want to put it into RealMedia afterwards....I've converted my own Friends DVD's (series 5) into realmedia files (300 kbps with 25 fps) and it works just fine...
Go to http://www.winvcr.com/ for more details and there was a demo out there somewhere.....I have a cracked version, so if I get the time I'll upload it somewhere and also if someone is interested in RealProducer (to create realvideo-files) I'll upload it than too....
Greetingz,
Roth