Recommendations on capture card

Is it better to get a seperate vid card and then a capture card so you can capture vhs tapes or do you recommend AIW.

[nizzy1115]

my friend has been using the 9600 aiw and i really love the interface it has. It was deffinatly nicer than my sony i had. I hear the hauppauge are pretty nice if you dont want an all in one. However, if you want a new graphics card and a capture card, i recomend the aiw.

Going with seperates. Leadtek has been recommended.

Do you think a person needs MCE or do you think just plain xp home would be fine? I know the oem capture cards require MCE but would it be necessary if I didn't get an oem card? Would I lose out on some of the good things that MCE does? I know that some reviews recommend MCE even if you don't have oem. What are your thoughts?

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[nizzy1115]

oem cards only require mce if they dont come with software specifically for the card. in my opinion, if you have xp home already that is all you will need with an aiw card because ati packages some pretty nice software along with it that pretty much rivals media center edition. If you dont have the os already, it might not hurt to pay the extra $20 bucks or what ever for media center because it allows you to do a few extra things (like stream video to your xbox 360) that home/pro wont let you. But really i dont think you need mce at all if you have an aiw.

I am in the building process and don't have anything for the computer yet.