Recommended Analog Capture Card

[clone_tk422]

Hi All,

I am wanting to input my cable set top box into a capture card for playback through Media Portal.

I have discovered choosing the right hardware for Media Portal can be tricky as some isnt compatible or will work well with Media Portal

So I was wondering if anyone could please suggest the best or most reliable capture card to use with Media Portal and if possible a card which has always been compatible with any version of Media Portal or one that is so popular that it should be supported in future Media Portal versions?

Also I have Kworld DVD Maker USB which inputs composite video for capture but it seems it doesnt work with MP but one thing that annoys me with it is that even though you input the audio into it, it doesnt send the audio through the USB, it just outputs it a 3.5mm stereo plug which plugs into the microphone input.

Are all caputre cards like this including PCI or do some take the audio input and process it?

Lastly, are there or are there ever likely to be capture cards with component input and digital audio input as this is the only thing missing from capture cards but you can get dvd recorders with component in so at least you can record a better signal so the price difference to have the input on a capture card shouldnt be too much?

Thanks!

[RanaUK]

Hi, I am using ATI Theatre 550 PRO; its quite a cheap card with very good quality. My card was manufactured by Sapphire and included a breakout-box with S-video, Composite, and Audio input. So the audio is processed by the card itself. BTW, its a hardware encoder; the only problem is their is no Linux support for this card (just in case).

With a bit more budget, I would look into hauppauge tuners.. they have couple of models that can do hardware encoding (which means less strain on your cpu).