I'm looking for an internal PCI capture card or USB2/FireWire capture device which will do the following:

* Allow me to watch video on my computer from the red/yellow/white cables or the old screw-style cable (is that coax?).

* Allow me to record video from VHS, possibly video game console gameplay.

Basically I want to convert my 64-bit gaming rig into a media center. I want to be able to hook a digital cable box up to my computer, watch TV on the computer, and use the computer to record content from cable (or whatever I hook up). I realize for a full media center modification, I also need a remote and receiver. I understand this... I'm not looking for those parts at this time, unless they're bundled with the capture device and it's still a good deal. I'm not looking for armchair websurfing just yet - I still have just a 19" CRT. But in the next few years, I want an HDTV (not a plasma, just a wide CRT one - Sears has a 34" Sony WEGA wide HDTV for $999, but that's Sears, so I'm sure I could get it cheaper) and want to use that as my monitor, but there are a couple things my sister-in-law and her boyfriend have recorded on VHS, and I want it on the computer. A couple home videos, a couple wrestling matches...

I've heard of a few, but with XP Media Center and something of a media center craze going on, I figured there'd be people here with some good and bad experiences I could learn from.

I tried asking this on another forum I'm on, but the topic got 66 views and no replies. I figure a video capture card/device is less common than, say, a CPU, but I also figure someone's had some kind of experience. "Stay clear of Brand A" or "I've always had good luck with Brand B" at least. Maybe a little brand war, like the AMD vs. Intel and nVidia vs. ATI debates we all know and/or took part in.

Heres what i use.

http://www.hauppauge.com/

SRX660

What, the WinTV-PVR-150 MCE Kit or another? That's the one I was looking at. I thought the -500 might be a little beyond what I'm trying to do. The -250 says it can be used to make DVDs (it comes with a Ulead program) but that it doesn't have a remote (even in the MCE version) or an MPEG decoder. Don't I need an MPEG decoder? (I'm pretty sure I have one - I use the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack, so I should have all common/important decoders.)

Is it (what you have) pretty good? Any problems, or is it just that easy to get TV/video content onto your computer with this hardware?

At $120 it was a little more than I was looking for, but since it has the remote and IR receiver, that's actually a pretty good deal.

//edit: Ended up getting this one. Pretty much the same thing (Newegg doesn't have everything on the Hauppage site, and the Hauppage site doesn't have every Hauppage product Newegg does, oddly enough) but this doesn't have the MCE kit (I don't have MCE yet anyway) and it has an FM antenna/input, so that's nice. Plus, I figure when I do buy MCE, I can just get any old MCE-compatible remote/receiver at that time, and as long as MCE can control the Hauppage unit, the remote can too - right?

Thank you for the reply and the referral.

This post has been edited by //Nathan: Mar 25 2006, 02:41 PM