I did some more research on this after initially posting... The free program here is supposed to be good for hdtv on slow computers.... give it a try and tell me if it works for you...
www.watchhdtv.net ...I'm quite curious.
I still haven't bought the HDTV tuner yet. I have a kworld card in my home computer tho and it works fine for hdtv and analog, but I've read hauppage is generally better, so I think that's the way I'll go.