How to Record Live TV on Your Windows and Mac PC

In old days, we need to install a TV tuner to our PC for receiving cable and satellite TV signal. Now more and more online streaming providers offer Streaming live TV shows via applications on desktop and phones, so you don’t have to bother with setting up TV tuner and TV antenna to turn your computer into a PC TV. With some subscription-based streaming service providers like PLEX and free online open-source HD IPTV services, it is very easy to watch Live TV on PC. Indeed that, you don’t have to wait in front of your PC for most shows with restricted schedule like before. While there are still some times when you need to record those Live TV shows for later watch or backup on your PC.

So, if you want to record TV shows on your Windows PC or even on Mac, what feasible and practical options do you have? That is highly depends on how you watch Live TV on your computer. While I will introduce one options to you that fits almost all situations.

There are so many solutions to record live tv on pc. While there is a universally applicable method to do, that is to record live TV with a third-party recording tool – Aiseesoft Screen Recorder. This tool works well on various recording scenarios. You can set to record full-screen or a customized area of your screen. You can set up a recording task with start time and end time, so that you don’t have to wait in front of the screen. You can read some webpages while recording live tv on your with setting the webpages that you visit to be invisible in the video recorded. If you expect HD quality for the TV video that you record, I will say that enlarge your tv playback to full-screen and set the video recorder to capture full screen will be a rational choice.

Step 1 Download and install Aiseesoft Screen Recorder on your computer. if you are with macOS, click on the Mac Download button located below.

Step 2 After the installation, the program will be opened automatically. You will see four boxes there – Video Recorder, Audio Recorder, Screen Capture, and more. Select the Video Recorder box, and you will be redirected to the screen video recorder pane. On the pane, you have access to all customization settings, you can adjust the recording area, turn on/off the system sound, enable your microphone, and you can even exclude some windows and applications that you don’t want to record.

Step 3 Open your TV playback application and resize it according to your need. When your TV show is on, click on REC button or press keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+S to start recording the video. It means quite ridiculous to wait in front of your pc for the live TV, so with the extract start time and length of the live tv, you can set up a recorder Task Schedule beforehand. When time is up, the recorder will be triggered by the task and start to record live TV. In this way, you don’t have to wait before the show and wait during the show. Just set up a task and leave your PC alone.

Don’t forget to set your desktop not to turn off the display or put the computer to sleep.

Step 4 When Live TV is off, you can press Ctrl+Alt+S to stop the record and export the record live TV shows to MP4, WMV, MOV, f4v, or ts. You can even export the live tv clips to gif files for sharing.

On Windows 10, Xbox Game Bar is built-in by default with which you can record live TV on your PC without a dime. Xbox Game Bar is a very powerful tool for game players on Windows. Some people use it to capture and save their video gameplay, and we use it to record live TV shows. Follow the procedure below to use Xbox Game Bar for recording.

Step 1 Enable Game bar

Search “game bar” in the search bar of Windows Start menu. And select game bar settings in the search result list. Then on the Game bar settings window, enable Game bar by click on the switcher button below text label Record game clips, screenshots, and broadcast using Game bar.

Step 2 Start Recording Live TV

Open the program that you use to watch live TV and resize the window as you like. Then press Win+G to launch Windows 10 Game bar. On the game bar overlay, click Capture icon and click the record button with a dot. Now Xbox Game DVR is recording your TV. While you finish the record, just click on the stop recording icon in yellow.

Only you use a TV tuner to watch live TV on your computer, this could be your choice. TV tuner barely still exit. If you still utilize this method to watch live TV, you can try the first method mentioned above to record live TV on your computer. If you have some hardware video recorder (HD PVR), just follow the instruction from the recorder and you will have your live TV record.

The three methods listed above are the most practical ones to record Live TVs for most people. Among three of those, I highly recommend Aiseesoft Screen Recorder, it is well refined, reliable, and powerful with many customization features to save your time. Just download it now and start to record your Live TV on PLEX, IPTV, Hulu +Live TV, or Youtube Live.