Whats the differences in PVR cards?

[mikeford]

I have been using All in Wonder cards on and off for a LONG time, but I get the feeling I am missing something about the newer cards. Most recent is a Radeon AIW running on a Athlon 1800+ with XP pro and not much but MMC installed. When it works its fine, but its just kinda flakey and can freeze up during mode changes.

Are newer cards different? For example a 9800 pro AIW? or is another brand better for PVR?

Is it that some do Hardware encoding?

Thanks, can't believe I don't know this.

 

[Nil Einne]

I used to use software encoding. have since moved to hardware and don't regret it.

The 3 best cards are probably the Hauppage ones (150 and 550 as well as the 250 and 350), the ATI ones (550 or the newer 650) and the Nvidia ones (DualTV). I would have to say Hauppage appears to be losing out to ATI and Nvidia so personally I would go for one of those. You can keep your Radeon AIW for the video out however...

This page may interest you http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18463

 

[xfile]

FWIW I have used the Hauppage 250 to convert about 30 hours of VHS-C videos and it worked great.