There's nothing new about this because digital video recorders have been around since the late 90's and at one time nearly half of the homes in the U.S. had one. What you're talking about is building your own instead of renting one from a cable TV or satellite TV company like most people do or buying a TiVo. I built my first DVR / Home Theater PC in 1999 and now have two and pull in TV stations up to 51 miles away from three directions. I used parts from old desktop computers but bought nicer cases from Silvestone and nMedia that look like audio / video receivers.
Using a USB tuner and a laptop is mainly what college kids or business travelers living in hotels do. Most of the people I know that build their own HTPC/DVR have nice cases like I do and use a 4K TV as the display, a soundbar or A/V receiver connected to surround sound speakers, and control everything with a remote control and occasionally use a wireless keyboard to install updates or make other software changes. Building your own HTPC allows unlimited storage for recording TV shows and you can keep your entire video and music collection on one system and access everything via remote control from anywhere in the house without having to get off the couch to look for a Blu-Ray disk. You just use a smart TV or streaming device connected to each TV to access your HTPC and media. All you have to do to get more storage is add another hard drive to your HTPC or media server and they come in sizes up to 16-18 terabytes now.
At one time Microsoft had a HTPC program called Windows Media Center that came out as a special version of Windows XP but was later included free in Vista and Windows 7. Most people never knew about it or confused it with Windows Media Player but it was a full blown DVR/HTPC program with a program guide included. All you needed to add was a TV tuner card from a company like Hauppauge or a networked tuner like an HDHomeRun. You could also stream videos, add an FM radio tuner, play your entire music collection, or watch a slideshow of family or vacation photos. Microsoft also had Windows Home Server that you could run on a whole home media server to store all of your videos, music, and photos but Microsoft discontinued both a while back. MythTV, SageTV and BeyondTV also came out in the early 2000's around the same time as WMC but BeyondTV is now just a commercial program. Most people now use Emby or Plex as their HTPC software on either a Windows or Linux system.