Hauppage WINTV-PVR's Good? Bad?

[130T|_|L15/\/\]

I have done my homework, except getting peoples' opinions. I am interested in getting one of the WINTV-PVR models, the WINTV-PVR, WINTV-PVR 250, or WINTV-PVR 350. My uses are recording TV programs from cable TV feed. I do not have digital cable, its COX cable just to let you know. The WINTV-PVR 350 is the only one of the three that has mpeg2 hardware encoder. The WINTV-PVR is the only that can do raw AVI capture. Be best to capture in AVI, if I do not want dropped frames, say Huffyuv maybe something else like mjepg, or possibly something else. The WINTV-PVR seems possibly a good choice for me. What about PCM audio? The WINTV-PVR is the only one of the three that has that. I am very close to the ground block, I can stick my head out the window I can see where the TV coax and the cable modem coax originate. I'd likely be shooting for VCD format for personal storage.

[jameshgross]

I have the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB and am very happy with it. I use it on my Dell Latitude C600. I capture right off the cable or from VHS tape. The WINTV2000 app is very good but I have switched to Easy Cd for burning and TMPGENC for encoding. Although the product is excellent the tech support is next to nothing.

[epo]

350 is the only one with HW decoder, all of them have HW encoders. Hauppauge releases driver updates only for 250/350, also these newer cards have much better picture quality. Haven't suceeded with making working SVCD (audio sync), but DVD is OK. Ulead's SmartRender doesn't work with PVR generated files (at least didn't with v.1.2 & v.1.4 drivers).

[130T|_|L15/\/\]

What is the advantage of having a hardware decoder? Is the WINTV-PVR still have official updates by Hauppage?