I'm piling in to help myself if possible. I've got laptops primarily, none of them young but I keep one for watching stuff on the flat screen Samsung TV instead of the laptop screen. It connects via HDMI cable. My understanding is that HDMI is two-way. My question is:

Is there a way I can record onto the laptop hard drive stuff that is showing on my television, which is NOT csble but receives via digital broadcast. In other words, can I use my laptop similarly to the old-style video recorder? Seems to me there should be software for this unless the powers that be have determined to make this a digital no-go.