[MEncoder-users] tv tuner card suggestions?

[Dieter]

> it has to be a pci card,

There are USB tuners, Ethernet tuners and probably Firewire tuners.
These don't use up a valuable PCI slot.  Newer computers have fewer
and fewer PCI slots, due to having some PCIe slots instead.  And
USB/Ethernet/Firewire tuners can be used with a laptop.  If you go
this route you can have more than 2 tuners.

> currently i only have analogue tv,

Are you sure?  Many countries have digital broadcasts.  In the US, the
analog broadcasts are scheduled to end 2009-02-17.  Some tuners can do
both analog and digital.  You don't need a digital TV, just a digital
tuner.  The digital broadcasts are already encoded (compressed) at the
TV station, so they take very little CPU to record.

> does it need to be connected to the sound card of the computer

Some analog tuners require a sound input.  So you would need a sound input
per tuner.  Recording a digital station does not require a sound input.

> i want it to include an encoder on the card, so my cpu can be left in
> peace

Note that watching a recording requires decoding, which also requires a lot
of CPU, or decoding hardware.  The decode is required regardless of whether
the original was analog or digital.  Some video cards provide hardware assist,
with varying levels of success, and may or may not have OS support in *BSD or
Linux.  There are also Ethernet-to-TV boxes which handle the decode and let
you put the noisy computer in another room.

> hauppauge

These are popular.  Also consider the DViCO FusionHDTV5 (various models,
analog and digital, PCI and USB), and the HDHomeRun (Ethernet, digital only,
dual tuners).