Media PC Advice Needed Please

[jaffacaique]

I am thinking of building a Media PC, mainly to record TV, play music etc. If I build a SFF PC I am presuming that I would just need to purchase is a PCI TV card and connect the Freeview aerial to this?

Is there a particular TV card that someone can recommend through personal use, I have seen past reviews and they usually get slated because the EPG is either too slow or just generally poor. Can you use other 3rd party software with a TV card? if so what would you recommend? I am planning on using either XP Pro 32bit or Vista Home Premium 32bit as the operating system and would like to save my video files as Mpeg 2.

I have used a Pinnacle Capture card for several years to transfer VHS to DVD with much success on my main PC. I could put this in the SFF PC and connect the aerial to a cheap freeview box if I had to but the Pinnacle Studio 11 software only allows me to view what is played into it in a small window with no option to increase the screen size.

[Ozzyjim]

Gday,

I use a pinnacle twin HD PCI card for recording of HDTV on the pc to .TS format using Pinnacle TV Pro but can be saved to a wide number of formats using version 4.9.4. I couldn't be happier with it, works better than most other software I have tried.

James.