oh and you can do that too. i never saw a laptop with
HDMI yet. (they haven't hit the market here yet, our town is about a year behind new tech, no computer has topped the 160GB hard drive margin yet even though i've heard terabyte many times)
I am getting an Acer Aspire that i can use to download TV shows (and the commercials, the good ones haha) anything from Nickelodeon to HBO if i wanted to. i have what's called Moyea Flash Video Downloader that can download shows before Youtube can do any deleting. i have about 10 years of Nickelodeon from 1982 to 1992 so far and a few other shows from Cartoon network and Hanna Barbera shows, but the 20GB drive in my Compaq Presario is outta disk space. i use them like portable Wi-Fi enabled DVRs.
Then hook them up to my Analog TV via A/V or S-Video and watch them as if i were on cable or satellite.