how much better quality

[dvd_maniac]

I currently own the ATI AIW 8500 capture card and am waiting for the new 9700 AIW pro to come out. ATI says that the 9700 is 20% hardware capture or something like that...They also say that hardware encoders only use a slight higher % anyways. I am wondering for 500USD is it worth it compared to other dedicated hardware encoders. I am looking for the best possible quality I can get for around the 5-6 hundred USD range. I came across the REALmagic DVR Digital Video Recorder
online and would like to know if anybody knows how much better if any, the quality of CAPTURE is? Also any other pros-cons would be appreciated.
p.s. I am capturing via s-video from satellite and digital cable sources.

[Mishel]

I have been using the Sigma DVR card for about a year and can't speak highly enough of it (if you ignore the setup problems)

I work with mini DV tape and after authoring and then capture from the authored tape real time with the card.

You cant tell the mpeg2 from the original DV tape. I tried all the usual CCE and TMPGenc and they were nowhere near as good