Which video capture card to get?

[ivyfield]

Hello, I am confused over which video capture card to get. If I am looking to capture HDTV, which cards are the good ones. Some confusion:

1. I live in Canada and all the cable tv is changing to digital tv..analog will be obsolete soon

2. I am mainly looking to capture stuff from my DVR.

3. Would a DVD burner be better than a video capture card?

4. From what I've looked at, the Hauppauge HD PVR looks like a good choice but it's a bit pricey being over $200
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

5. QAM enabled needed?

Any better cards out there?

Thanks

 

[Ubrales]

You are on the right track!

Hauppauge products are good and as you correctly pointed out, pricey! I have the Hauppauge HVR-1950 in use for 2 years now.

 

[leon2006]

Go for 2250 you can record 2 shows at a time. It works well with windows.

 

[baracubra]

Hauppauge is great but $$. Also have a look at the AverMedia HD pci card. It has 2 HDMI inputs and a converter (any analog cable you could imagine -> HDMI).

Also, I take it you're gonna want to record tv shows in HD? If that is the case, you're gonna run into HDCP (High-bandwidth Data copy protection). This will prevent you from recording anything through HDMI (can still record TV with component cable). In any case, really research the specific model you wanna get (most legally available tuners have HDCP). If you're ok with component quality, then you're fine. You can record your PS3 or Xbox with HDMI as its not HDCP.

However, there is a driver with a bug still available for the AverMedia tuner that allows 3'rd party software to access the HD stream and therefore record it. I'm not sure if this forum allows discussion of such work-arounds, but if you're interested its driver 1.12.64.22