Help me choose ATI AIW 9800 vs. Hauppauge WinTV 250

[shhas]

I have researched this and have read a whole bunch of similar suggestions but have not seen a direct comparison of these two cards.

I would like to capture movies via a tuner card from my digital cable box in DVD compliant Mpeg 2 and then write them onto DVD-R.

I have narrowed it down to Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 in combination with SAGETV and an IR blaster for changing channels vs. ATI 9800 pro.

Which one would you choose? ATI is not entirely a hardware MPEG 2 capture card from my gather but rather a "hardware assisted" capture card ( I had a Pinnacle DV 500 DVD and still it was slow).

Time is of the essence for me and I don't want to have my computer locked up so that it could render the files. Is the ATI a ture "real time" mpeg 2 card?
or I need to mess with the captured clips of the movies again to have a workable mpeg 2?

How do you compare quality of these two cards? I read all these stories about A/V sync issue with these cards? how do they compare?

I have fairly robut PC (latest P4 with 1.5 gig ram, two SATA drives).

Thanks,

[lordsmurf]

It is realtime MPEG-2 and is DVD compliant. Can dump direct to disc. It is only partially hardware (and partially software), so don't try to do a massive amount of other things on the system.

Either buy a full MPEG-2 hardware card (BEWARE that the Hauppauge can have serious MPEG-2 flaws that are not compliant for DVD burning) ... or get a second computer ... or just let it encode when you are not on it.

Look at Canopus or Matrox MPEG boards for serious MPEG hardware.

[shhas]

Thanks Lordsmurf for the quick response

I forgot to add this in my original post.

Has anyone been successful at adding an external IR blaster (e.g. a USB Ir blaster) to work with the ATI cards for automatic changing of the channles on the cable box?