Moth3r said:

Historically, USB devices had a bad reputation and a PCI or PCIe card device was recommended. I've got no idea what these newer devices are like, however.

The Hauppauge USB Live-2 (CX23102-based) just dumps the raw analog->digital signal on the wire. It does no hardware encoding at all, which is great if you want to do raw AVI captures with something like VirtualDub.

It's an excellent little device and I've never seen it drop any frames. The comb filter sucks, however, so I suggest using the s-video input only.

One possible issue is that it's "Macrovision 1.0 Detection Compliant", so a Macrovision-stripper is needed if you plan to do any VHS rips.

Edit: I forgot to mention that it works in the 4:2:2 (UYVY/YUY2) color-space.