Which TV card for recording external sources?

[Taz]

I'm after a PCI or PCI-Express TV card for my PC that can receive analogue and digital signals. Plus, I want to be able to connect my VCR to it (remembers those?!) and convert a lot of old VCR recordings into digital recordings (eg. AVI or MPEG). Is there a card that can achieve the above?

[Funkstar]

The Haupauge HVR cards will do all this as for you.

[Taz]

Thanks Funkstar - the HVRs look ideal! I think this one fits the bill perfectly:

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR1300 PCI Digital & Analogue with Remote: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=318489

[Funkstar]

yeah that should do you just fine

[Taz]

A quick update: I installed the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR1300 and it works very well with Vista 64-bit. It took a while to scan for all the available analogue and digital channels but they display fine. I have also attached my old VHS VCR to the S-video input and am slowly transferring my old VHS recording onto my PC into MPG format. This could take a few weeks as I have about 40 tapes. I haven't bothered attaching the IR sensor and, hence, am not using the supplied remote control.

The quality of the recordings is acceptable considering the source is a regular VHS tape (some of my recordings are over 20 years old!).

The WinTV application interface is not very good. The documentation is almost non-existant and there is no help feature. The most confusing thing was to add the S-video input as another channel to the channel list. Those are the downsides.

However, overall I am happy with the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR1300 and it does exactly what I wanted it to do.