TV Tuner Card Help

[sgs]

Tv-tuner newbie, needs help, insights, web references... Have two cable boxes that perform tuning, each hooked to vcr's. Want to replace both vcr's with my existing pc. Am happy with my ATI Radeon 9200 SE (agp, 128 mb) under Win XP pro (1 gb memory). Want to be able to send cable signal from both boxes to same PC, each (simultaneously) recording to hard disk. Have C, D drives (internal) and F drive external, so I can route simultaneous recordings to different hard disks, if needed. Also want to be able to record from 1 cable box as I'm playing signal from other box. Also want to record long event (e.g. sports) and start playing recording from beginning while event recording still in progress.

Should I get a tuner card or an ATI all-in-wonder card? For tuner card, is powerful/moderately priced software available? Should I get 1 tuner/video card or two? Do I need to upgrade my system memory to 2gb or 4gb? Where can I go for further research?

[mobo57]

Since you are using the cable boxes for channel tuning, you don't "need" a tuner card, a capture card will work just fine. That said, to capture two signals you will need two cards. There are some cards out there that allow a second signal capture but they are hard to find and pricey. Most of the cards do come with some sort of software to allow scheduling, recording, play back and time-shifting.
Unless your system is pretty powerful, running two cards that do software compression will result in dropped frames, lag, poor quality etc. I'd suggest that you get something that has onboard mpeg hardware compression, as uncompressed video can run up to 20 gig's per hour of recording.
There are a lot of "it depends" in this area, such as the cards you get, your system specs, including mobo and HDD configuration and your software setup. And there are a lot of debates as to what capture cards are best. I have/had many including Hauppauge and ATI cards which I like the best.

As to memory, I'd get at least 2 gig.

[Sterling_Aug]

You don't really want much do you? Sounds like you need a TV studio instead of a PC.

[rockinup1231]

Yay! It's not a mercury he suggested.

[mobo57]

You just wake up rockin??? :D

[AllGamer]

....i want my TV studio... and pay per view on demand.... :D

yes that's why i have the ATI All in Wonder X1900

and if you pair it up with another ATI TV Wonder Pro

then you can do all the above and perhaps some more

i can watch 2 feeds at once PIP or as a separate TV window

but i can only record 1 feed at a time (meanwhile you watch another feed on the same or another window)

the even only last as long as your HDD space is available

reason why i got soooo many HDDs and more than Terabyte on space

you also have replay and playback, etc...

it's just great! :D