As anyone over at the unofficial Hauppauge PVR support forum will tell you, Hauppauge is notorious for releasing products before they get them working. The PCI version of the PVR has been out for nearly two years and STILL doesn't have fully-functional drivers! I've owned my PCI card for more or less exactly a year at this point, and it wasn't until about three months ago that I got the card mostly working.
Now, as for the USB version, one of my friends has the USB version of the PVR, and apparently the drivers for that version are considerably less functional than the PCI version. This is likely due in part to the fact that Hauppauge has been focusing mainly on the PCI version drivers, since they are more widely used. Currently they are focusing on making the WDM drivers for the PCI (and possibly USB) version of the card, now that they've "finished" the VFW (Video for Windows) drivers. So, in short, I'd be wary of the USB version, as the driver support is lacking ever more than the PCI version.
If I may, here are two additional notes that will save you some aggravation:
1) If you end up getting the PCI version of the PVR, don't use it in a system with an SB Live! card, or you will have all sorts of problems (this is because the SB Live! is not a bus mastering card, and consumes so much bandwidth on the PCI bus that it starves the PVR card). A good majority of the people having problems with consistently corrupted PVR captures fixed the problem by replacing the SB Live with another card (such as the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz) -- Hauppauge even says on their support site now that they recommend replacing the SB Live if you have one!
2) (This applies to both the PCI and USB versions) If you plan on capturing from non-perfect analog sources, namely a VCR playing a VHS tape, you will most likely have corrupted captures, as hardware-based capture cards tend to choke when the video signal is anything less than perfect in terms of synchronization. This goes especially if you're planning on capturing home videos, or videos of shows you taped off TV but paused the recording to edit out commercials, etc. I ended up buying a time base corrector (TBC) to solve this problem, but this is an expensive solution (the cheapest TBC I've found is $300). Just be aware that, even once you get the card working to its fullest potential in terms of drivers and such, the hardware itself isn't capable of capturing from sources with bad or broken video signals on its own.
Now that I've gotten this card working, I'm very happy with it, as the capture quality is very nice (especially at, say, 12 MB/sec MPEG-2). But for the first seven months or so, it was HELL to get it working. The "Hauppauge community" has learned a lot since then, though, so it may not take you quite as long, but just don't expect any of the Hauppauge PVR cards to work right out of the box.
Not only did he not direct Empire Strikes Back (which is the best of the Star Wars films IMHO), he didn't direct Return of the Jedi either. Richard Marquand directed that one.
Personally, I find Episode IV very hard to sit through. Every time I watch it I can't help but wonder how well it would have done if it were first released sometime in the past few years (without any other Star Wars films being out). I'm sure it would have done decently, but I doubt it would have enjoyed the massive success it did in 1977.
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As anyone over at the unofficial Hauppauge PVR support forum will tell you, Hauppauge is notorious for releasing products before they get them working. The PCI version of the PVR has been out for nearly two years and STILL doesn't have fully-functional drivers! I've owned my PCI card for more or less exactly a year at this point, and it wasn't until about three months ago that I got the card mostly working.
Now, as for the USB version, one of my friends has the USB version of the PVR, and apparently the drivers for that version are considerably less functional than the PCI version. This is likely due in part to the fact that Hauppauge has been focusing mainly on the PCI version drivers, since they are more widely used. Currently they are focusing on making the WDM drivers for the PCI (and possibly USB) version of the card, now that they've "finished" the VFW (Video for Windows) drivers. So, in short, I'd be wary of the USB version, as the driver support is lacking ever more than the PCI version.
If I may, here are two additional notes that will save you some aggravation:
1) If you end up getting the PCI version of the PVR, don't use it in a system with an SB Live! card, or you will have all sorts of problems (this is because the SB Live! is not a bus mastering card, and consumes so much bandwidth on the PCI bus that it starves the PVR card). A good majority of the people having problems with consistently corrupted PVR captures fixed the problem by replacing the SB Live with another card (such as the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz) -- Hauppauge even says on their support site now that they recommend replacing the SB Live if you have one!
2) (This applies to both the PCI and USB versions) If you plan on capturing from non-perfect analog sources, namely a VCR playing a VHS tape, you will most likely have corrupted captures, as hardware-based capture cards tend to choke when the video signal is anything less than perfect in terms of synchronization. This goes especially if you're planning on capturing home videos, or videos of shows you taped off TV but paused the recording to edit out commercials, etc. I ended up buying a time base corrector (TBC) to solve this problem, but this is an expensive solution (the cheapest TBC I've found is $300). Just be aware that, even once you get the card working to its fullest potential in terms of drivers and such, the hardware itself isn't capable of capturing from sources with bad or broken video signals on its own.
Now that I've gotten this card working, I'm very happy with it, as the capture quality is very nice (especially at, say, 12 MB/sec MPEG-2). But for the first seven months or so, it was HELL to get it working. The "Hauppauge community" has learned a lot since then, though, so it may not take you quite as long, but just don't expect any of the Hauppauge PVR cards to work right out of the box.
Sorry for the long post.
Not only did he not direct Empire Strikes Back (which is the best of the Star Wars films IMHO), he didn't direct Return of the Jedi either. Richard Marquand directed that one. Personally, I find Episode IV very hard to sit through. Every time I watch it I can't help but wonder how well it would have done if it were first released sometime in the past few years (without any other Star Wars films being out). I'm sure it would have done decently, but I doubt it would have enjoyed the massive success it did in 1977.