Mattrixx wrote:

>
> Wow, this certainly is a great deal of "good stuff" to digest and research!
> I appreciate the time and knowledge it took for you Paul, to respond to my
> query.
>
> I am actually replacing an ancient ATI "All In Wonder" which has served me
> quite well over the years. I use the supplied ATI software, or a very fine
> program (in my opinion)called "neoDVD7" for my Sat. capturing. The down side
> of using an ALL IN Wonder is ofcourse, your locked in with that generation
> video card.
>
> On another note, with a dual core X2 3800+ CPU, how much more important is
> it for hardware compression/decompression encoding on a capture device vrs
> software?
>
> Thanks again
> Matt
>

At this point, I'd suggest having a look in rec.video.desktop, for more
practical experiences. Either use Google and look at people's past choices,
or ask your question there, and see what they would choose as a solution.

The PVR350 is cheap enough, that you don't have to torture yourself. You
can set the quality high (least compression), and get as good a picture
as possible, at the expense of slightly higher disk utilization. That way,
the card is almost behaving like an uncompressed card, since the losses
aren't very great. And at least with a card like that, you know you
aren't paying a price for compression or decompression. (A card like that
can still use CPU, and the "why" is a great mystery.)

(The manual has a section on the quality options)
http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/manuals/m-pvr.pdf

(The hardware requirement is "733MHz P3", which will load one core a bit.)
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/produ...ta_pvr350.html

Since the uncompressed cards are so cheap, you could buy one expensive
card and one cheap card, and experiment with both. I guess it really
depends on how many days you want to spend with a search engine,
digging up articles and reviews for the various approaches. If the
cheap uncompressed card doesn't pan out, you can still find other
uses for it. For example, if you need to set up a surveillance camera,
and have it take a snapshot when there is a scene change, the
uncompressed card could be used for that (with, say, a dedicated PC).
So you don't have to throw the card away, if it turns out to be too
resource intensive to be unnoticed on your 3800+ X2.

I've given up on recording TV at home here, because I don't have
cable, and I don't have a data source good enough to capture.
Some day, we'll get OTA digital here, and maybe then I'll give
it another shot, with a newer card.

Paul