Hello, I was wondering if it was possible to run dual video cards in order to capture a signal from my Satellite box running component cables. The reason I ask is because I was looking to purchase a PVR card so I can record my shows onto my comp since my Emerson VCR/HDD just went out on me, but I just bought a ATI Sapphire 4670 GFX card that I really like, and don't want to get rid of in order to use the other card. Will computers let you run 2 at once? Don't you have to choose between using one card over the other, because if I were to connect my old video card onto the system, video would be output from it instead of the ATI card, what problems will I run into if I go ahead and purchase the PVR card? I'll have to get a bigger HDD as well if I go ahead with this purchase, any recommendations?
You need to get a PCI tv tuner card. These will install in one of your empty PCI slots. No need to remove your sapphire video card. The video card and the tv tuner card are entirely different and won't interfere with each other. Make sure you get a tv tuner card with built-in mpeg hardware encoders. You can find the hauppagauge pvr-150 on the internet for under $50.00. I have 3 of these installed in my computer, I can record 3 different shows at one time. I also have 4 hard drives in my computer, if you only have one TV tuner card, you don't really need a very large hard drive (even a 500gb drive will store over 300 hours of video). It would be a good idea to have a boot drive and a seperate drive for your videos. Make sure your hard drives have fans on them since they are always recording video. Don't get a cheap tv tuner card, those use software mpeg encoders which will slow down your computer and won't do livetv smoothly. The pvr-150 are independent of the computer cpu/video/audio. I can be recording 3 shows at one time in the background and be playing video games/listening to mp3's on the same computer with no slowdown. Once you start building a PVR computer, it's a definite improvement over a VCR. Mine stays on 24/7 for months at a time, only shutdown to upgrade parts. http://www.mythtv.org/w/images/6/60/PVR150.jpg
