For external Devices for a Laptop it would be best to get a Hardware Mpeg encodeing device Like the Hauppague WinTV PVR-150 USB.... http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvrusb2.html USB devices are still Limited in Bandwidth so it is best to get one that uses Hardware Compression so you don"t drop frames and Suffer from Bad Quality and Sync problems..... Cheers