Recomendations for Video Capture Cards

[Jasvinder S. Bahra]

Hi all,

I've recently had a PC become available, and I would like to set it up as a
kind of video recorder.

I would like to purchase a card of some sort that would allow me to connect
the PC to my TV, and record television programmes on the hard-drive. The
reverse also - playing back the recording, and viewing it on the TV.

Now, i've done a little research, and I understand that FreeBSD "provides
support for PCI-based TV cards using a Brooktree Bt848/849/878/879 or a
Conexant CN-878/Fusion 878a Video Capture Chip with the bktr(4) driver".

Does anyone have any recomendations on a video capture card that would be
suitable?

Has anyone done anything like this before? I presume so as the driver
already exists.

How successful (or otherwise), did the project turn out?

I realise there is lots of software in the ports collection that can provide
audio/video capture capabilities, but does anyone know of any that can be
scheduled to automatically start and stop capturing at predefined times? I
suppose I could use the crontab if the software supports command line
configuration...

Regards,

Jazz