Recording live television in Windows 10

Q: I was one of those who used Windows Media Centre not just for playing DVD movies, but also for watching and recording live, free broadcast TV on the computer. So what are my options now, should I ever decide to leave Windows 7 for Windows 10?

A: Microsoft’s retirement of the Windows Media Centre software is one of the many things about the system that has caused some Windows 10 users aggravation. If you do not feel like searching the Web for do-it-yourself solutions that may (or may not) restore the Windows Media Centre program to working order on a Windows 10 machine, you can find a few alternative applications.

If you are keeping your existing PC and internal television tuner card when upgrading to Windows 10, the open-source MediaPortal program might be able to take over the TV viewing and recording functions formerly handled by Windows Media Centre. The software works with most major brands of TV tuner cards. NextPVR is another program that can record live television from the TV tuner hardware connected to your PC. Both MediaPortal and NextPVR are free and supported by donations.

If you do not already have a TV tuner card in the computer or want hardware that connects to the PC externally, several companies make tuner boxes to pull in those over-the-air broadcast signals. The prices for some external tuner boxes may be higher than a standard internal TV tuner card, but many bring along their own apps so you can also stream live TV to your mobile devices. Many external tuners also work with Macs.

Tablo makes external DVR models — a two-tuner and a four-tuner version for recording multiple channels at once — and it comes with its own recording software. Prices start at about $220 (Dh807), but you need to supply an HDTV antenna and an external hard drive. With an antenna connection, SiliconDust’s HDHomeRun line of tuners can also play and record live broadcast television on the computer. Prices start at about $130 for the hardware, and it works with several media-management programs, including the popular free Kodi software. Hauppauge’s $150 Broadway external tuner is another option.

Q: How do you write margin notes in iBooks on a Mac?

A: When you have an iBook file open on the Mac’s screen, drag the mouse over the text you want to comment on. A box automatically pops up giving you options including highlight the passage, add a margin note or copy the selected text. Choose the Add Note option from the menu. An electronic Post-it-style note opens and you can type in your annotations. Notes and highlighting also sync with the iOS versions of the book if you are reading it on different devices.

You can see all your notes within the book by clicking the title bar of the book window and then clicking the notepad icon on the left side of the title bar. (Not all iBooks support notes, but many do.) You can also open the Notes panel by going to the View menu and choosing Show Notes Panel, or by pressing the Command and 4 keys on the Mac’s keyboard. In OS X 10.11, you can remove a note by selecting it in this same Notes Panel and deleting the note text. To delete the highlighting and note together, just reselect the text and choose Remove Highlight & Note from the menu that appears.

In many iBooks, you can also share notes and selected passages with your friends on Facebook, Twitter or by Messages or Mail. To share one of your notes, right-click or Control-click its entry in the Notes panel and select an option from the contextual menu. In many cases, you can even share a selected passage of up to 200 words from the book. When you highlight the text, choose the More option from the menu and pick a platform for social distribution; you can also save your iBook note as an OS X note. The More menu also has search and look-up commands for selected words, as well as a text-to-speech recitation feature.