Hi,

I've finally made the start to setup my first HTPC after procastinating for more than a year. I have learnt from this forum since beginning that WinTV PVR 250 or 350 is an excellent choice. As I wanted to keep the cost low, I have decided on PVR 250 since.

However, the problem with my procastinating for more than a year? The local stores here do not carry PVR 250 anymore, what they have is the newer (does it equate to better?) PVR 150 model. From the Hauppauge site, it looks like PVR 150 is the same as PVR 250 except the capability to encode into VCD format. However, I really would like to find out from you folks here whether I will have high chance of going through the installation without problem if I use this card?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

Cheers.

at this point you will have almost 0% chance of getting the pvr150 to work.

There is a VERY early stage driver, but I would go with the 250/350 for now.

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Xsecrets

Is there other tested TV cards with hardware MPEG2 encoding that I should use? The hardware that I've got is MSI MegaPC 180 + Athlon XP 2600+ and 2x256 MB memory. Do you think I can relies the CPU/Memory to do time-shifting stuff or even just pure TV recording?

at this point the only real option for hardware encoding is the pvr250/350 there is also the m179 that is supported, but they have been discontinued and are difficult to find.

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Xsecrets

Hardware encoding is nice and simple, but you've got plenty of CPU and RAM and a raw capture card with software encoding should also work for you.

Thank you both for the advice. I would still try to look for a PVR250. Failing which, I guess I will try out a raw capture card that is supported. Thanks.

I actually recommend going the PVR-250 route since it's much simpler. My point was that you've got enough CPU horsepower there for anything short of HDTV using a pcHDTV 3000 card, so your options are wide open.