Video Capture Card Hardware Features

[bobarotti]

I have reviewed the questions and answers re TV Capture cards back through 2008 and have not located the answer that I am looking for, so here goes. With the advent of Digital OTA and the demise of VCR's I am looking to turn a computer into a DVR. I need to know what features I should look for in a Video Capture Card. When they say hardware encoding...do they have a processor on card? Memory on card? I have an outside antenna (aerial) that enters via coax cable and F-style ending. I am not so much interested in software answers as I am in hardware features, however, I am using Windows 7 if that makes a difference. Thanks.

My rig:
Asus M3N78-VM
AMD Athlon x2 7750 Black Edition running at stock
4gb's Patriot ddr2 800 RAM
160 gb Western Digital HDD
Various and sundry other hardware beasties

 

[mindless728]

well sounds like you need a run of the mill TV-Tuner card

depending on how many shows you need to watch/record at the same time depends on the tuner(s) you may need

i have the hauppauge 2250, with 2 tuners it can watch/record 2 different channels at the same time
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250

 

[leon2006]

Hauppage 2250 is the best bet from among the HDTV tuner for PC. I had it for over a year functioning as HD PVE and DVR on my PC.

Check this post

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/275057-33-looking-advice-tuner-opinions-hauppauge-2250

This hardware should run fine in W7.

Below is the vendor webpage

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr2250.html

 

[mindless728]

it works perfectly fine in Windows 7 a nice thing about W7 is they upped the tuner count from 2 to 4 for a single type so you can have 2 of these and have 4 tuners

 

[bobarotti]

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I have checked this card out and will likely go with it. It's a little pricey compared to others that I have seen by Hauppauge and other companies but you guys seem to like this card particularly well. There is not any output ports on this. Does the video card serve this function?

 

[mindless728]

yes, the video card serves as the ouput