I have a 1Mb broadband cable connection with ntl to my home office installed by work. My PC is a Dell with 256 Mb Ram with Windows XP Professional and Processor is Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.00GHz (someone had to tell me all that tecky stuff!)
Question - Can I watch the telly on my pc while pretending to work from home? Can I do this without an ariel? What do you recommend?
Yes and no. You need at TV capture card and the reception depends on your TV ariel rather than the broadness of your broadband. As far as I am aware there are no UK TV stations which stream their broadcasts on the web in fact I don't know of any streaming TV channels: perhaps someone who knows better will tell me different. I would have a TV in you home "work" room and surf for porn on the net to ultimately get the best out of your employer.
Button is right that you'll need a TV capture card installed (click here for the market leader in this http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/)
but with NTL cable coming in you should be able to get a very good picture and use you hard drive to record stuff as well.