Which is the best capture card out there?

[Netslayer007]

I am sick of my Pinnacle DC10+, so i'm looking for a new capture card, but there are tons out there. I just purchased a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 (Hardware MPEG2) and haven't had any luck in getting it to work, and also a AverTV Stereo (software MPEG2, hopefully AVI support also) but haven't tried that one much either. My price range is from 150US down, any suggestions? How are the cards I just picked up?

I want to be able to convert my hi8 tapes to MPEG2 to burn on DVD+/-R's. I have been really unimpressed with hardware MPEG2 cards so far when compared with capturing MJPEG and converting to DVD with Studio 8(I tried the Adaptec PCI Hardware MPEG2 card and it was terrible, plus none of the software really worked). So I'm not sure if i want a hardware MPEG2 card or a standard card that can do AVI's with a WDM & VFW driver for me to encode later with. (I'm checking out the Dazzle product line right now)

Specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
512MB PC2700 DDR333
120GB WD 7200rpm HD
ATI Radeon 7500 64mb DDR
ECS K7S5A mobo

[The village idiot]

NO DAZZLE!!!!!!

If you think you had problems with the other cards, you ain't seen nothin' yet!

If you want the "practicle" best and easiest check out the Datavideo DAC-2. After that try the DAC-100, or Canopus ADVC-100, or ADVC-1394, or ADVC-50.

If price is no object, try the $2000.00+ solutions that Canopus offers.

[Anonymous65]

Get the PVR-250 working, it will make the best looking mpeg-2 via hardware encoding. I have not seen any other hardware encoders that will beat the PVR-250, including the new Snazzi III.