A newby video/TV capture guy here. I cannot decide which capture card to buy. I am pretty much down to Hauppauge WinTV DBX or NVidia Personal Cinema (packaged as VisionTek Xtasy Exerything).

Both packages hace appealing features, so I need help with performance of each. I dont have a POWER system, just a Gateway 500Mghz PIII 20GB HD 16MB NVidia video card.

One thing I am not sure about WinTV is if you can view your edit on a TV screen simultanously with your monitor, which is possible with Personal Cinema (or so they claim). Thats important to me.

Another thing is, since I dont have a power system, having the PCI card doing most of the work during capture is important. This is a capability of WinTV, but Personal makes no mention. They both capture raw AVI. Stragely enough WInTV makes no mention of MPEG 1 or 2 capture.

Lastly, WinTV is PCI, while Personal Cimena is AGP. I think this is important for my particular situation. What do you all think? Are there better alternatives?

Also, I am going to add a 80-120GB ATA/100 7200 hard drive for my video work. Is it wise to connect it via Firewire or just do an internal? Thanks.

Go 'canes.