Still researching my self built system to record TV and then burn to DVD system. This post is about capture cards.

It is frustrating for this newbie to research "all" the issues. ATI is carried in all the stores but so many reviews say their drivers don't work===ie, the card simply doesn't work right? Then I read it works better with updated drivers, or with nforce chips on the motherboard rather than VIA chips or that you have to remember to enable DMA on initial setup, or that hardware encoding is a must.

I don't understand why external solutions don't work perfectly. They are stand alone boxes sending a digital steam over the USB connection. It makes sense to me that older break out boxes sending the signal over a USB 1.0 wire would have dropped frames. "NO ONE" should get a 1.0 USB box thinking it will work==but 2.0 systems have "bad drivers" that seem to need tweaking.

Is there a site that sets forth (((or is there personal experience for)) "the best" built from scratch system ((including the software that runs the whole thing)) so that there are no driver conflicts or other errors? Seems to me if one is starting from scratch there should be a "known" stable system---and when I say "best or stable" I am really just saying I want the thing to work?

Sorry to rant so much but I suspect too many first time geeks have the same issues? bobbo.