Advise me pls, want TiVOpc

[FAIRESTOFTHEMALL]

OK here's the deal- I built my own desktop with an Asus A7N8X DX (rev2) mobo and an Athlon XP 2500 (overclocked to 3200 speed), 2x256MB Mushkin Winbond bh5 CAS 2-2-2 PC3200 DDR, 400 Watt Fortron PSU, 10K RPM SATA Raptor HD, yeyah. I'm happy with these components but the time has come to upgrade the carryover GFX solution (a PCI ATI AIW 7500 I think) to something more substantial, and increasingly I find myself at a loss as to what the upgrade should be.

In the end I want to have TIVO/digital-media-center-esque functionality and the best reception/capture quality, i.e the ability to capture the clearest images at the highest res and framerates. But I've heard that interfacing with direcTV can be tricky, and as direcTV is the only means by which I get programming (out in the boonies here) it's really imperative that whatever I get play nice with it.

Initially I just thought I'd get a better AIW or equivalent nVidia card, but with the direcTV issue and quality my highest priorities some people have told me to consider seperate GFX+tuner cards as well.

What would ya'll recommend? Again I must stress best quality, plays well with direcTV, and one must not forget the other functions and software; if there's any trade-offs I should be aware of between a single-card and dual-card solution please advise me, and also lemme know if the software interfaces are helpful or hindrances.

TIA, hope to be less confused this time tomorrow ;p

 

[Crashman]

Well, the first problem is that you can't tune your DirectTV tuner with your PC's TV card. You'll be able to do other "TiVO" like features such as "pause live TV" and record things with most modern tuner cards and AIW cards, but you'll use the Composite Input or S-Video Input, allong with a stereo sound cable, to get the video into the PC.

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