Suggestions - new BTV setup

[Krib]

I just ordered a system with this hardware:

Intel Pentium D 830 3.0GHz (dual core)
Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe
VIDIA GeForce 7800GT 256MB
1GB 667MHz RAM

Basically, I want to set up a PVR on this machine with Beyond TV 4 and use it to frontend my Time Warner digital cable. But I'm a little new at this, so I'm not sure which TV card / BTV bundle to use

Ideally I'd like to get the DivX bundle with the Philips card, but I've read a lot of posts here on how DivX encoding is a little wonky. Also, would I only be able to encode in DivX with the Philips?

If I go with the Hauppage PVR 150, do I need to worry about it being incompatible with my dual core processor? Have read some posts on here about that.

Finally, my machine comes with an MCI TV Anywhere (no hardware encoder). Would I be able to use that with another TV card to watch one channel & record another, or would that require 2 cable boxes?

Thanks in advance for any feedback... sorry so many questions.

Title edited for clarity.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by Krib

Finally, my machine comes with an MCI TV Anywhere (no hardware encoder). Would I be able to use that with another TV card to watch one channel & record another, or would that require 2 cable boxes?

You might be able to get the analog channels by plugging the coax cable, but if you want your full line up you would indeed need two cable boxes...

[Krib]

Thanks... that neatly answers #3. I'll be skipping dual cards then, as Time Warner gets enough of my money already

Now I just need to settle on a TV encoder card that plays well with my hardware.

[Cross673]

I use time warner cable and I use two capture cards and one cable box. I just created two channel lineups.

1st lineup - Cable box hooked up to my PVR250 through s-video. I get all of the movie channels, etc. (you need an IR blaster though).

2nd lineup - Basic cable hooked up to my PVRUSB2 through a plain co-axil cable. I split the coax line before the cable box. I only get channels 1-79 on this lineup.

My setup works fine because I rarely need to watch one show and record a different show at the same time that are both on channels higher than channel 79.