Suppose you are a traveling salesman with a yen for the local anchorwoman. You spend day after fruitless day on the road, only to come home each night to a lonely hotel room. You sit there in your underwear drinking beer and watching the sub-par anchorwomen of whatever godforsaken town you happen to be in tonight. Well fret no more because the Japanese company Novac has released a television tuner for Skype software. It enables your computer to broadcast TV shows via the internet. With a laptop and an internet connection you can watch your local shows no matter where you happen to be.

I happen to know a thing or two about local news loyalty. When I was a teenager I briefly dated the comely daughter of the most trusted local weatherman in town. Unfortunately his daughter proved equally trustworthy, and I being a teenaged vat of seething hormones about to embark on a month-long trip abroad, our relationship was doomed. However had Skype and Novac been around I could have tuned in from half a world away to watch her frequent appearances on the local news. Of course this was 1985 and the only computer I had was a Commodore-64 and I somehow doubt my 300 baud modem would have provided suitable bandwidth.

The Novac TV tuner currently works with the Windows XP version of Skype. The software converts digitized video into a video conference stream and the channel can be changed by sending a Skype instant message. All you need to do is find something worth watching.

Product Home Page found Via RegHardware