Opinion on LOW END solution for cheapo media center

[ritmo2k]

I want to build another puter as a low end media center. I am thinking of using the ATI All in Wonder 7500. Its cheap, and it plays, and caps. Is this a good device to use for playing movies, and capping in premiere for the odd thing?

Thanks,
Ritmo2k

[John2002]

The AIW 7500 is an OK card for home theater use. I use it quite a bit for recording TV to watch and to archive shows and for watching movies. The captured TV video is about s-vhs quality at its best setting. You'll want to build it around a reasonably fast PC (~P2000) to record at full-frame (half-frame sucks) with a large disk. I've never been able to get pausing live TV to work which is OK because the quality isn't that good.

I don't know about capturing in Premiere but capture in MMC to mpeg2 works OK and capturing to avi with VirtualDub is flexible and reliable.