What I would like to do is be able to record broadcast TV (standard or high def) or cable (standard) , and then transfer the video to a laptop for watching on my long rail commute. I suppose this is time and place shifting.

If I could have reality bend to my will, I'd want to record to some removable format like an SD card or transfer via cables to my laptop's hard drive. I don't want to have to record directly to the laptop.

I'm not a big TV user. I don't have Tivo. I haven't done any video recording in the past.

Is there such a device available?