I am finally getting around to actually building a PVR and I have everything but the tuner cards. I want two, and I want Hauppauge ones, but I am not sure which two to get, because I don't want to "overlap" strengths & weaknesses.

I'm planning on ordering in the next day or so, so if anyone has some input it would be greatly appreciated!

System:
Athlon 64 3200+
Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939
250GB SATA WD HD
2x 512GB DDR400
Gigabyte GeForce FX5200 fanless

and two tuner cards..... To be determined...

Look on the wiki which has a break down of the cards. Basically it comes down to what you care about and what you want to maximize.

TV Output quality? Then make one of them a PVR-350.

Maximum tuners? Then make one of them a PVR-500.

Remote control? The non-MCE cards (PVR-350, PVR-250, PVR-150 model 1048) have these, but you only need one. Some PVR-150s have reliability issues here.

Uniformity? A pair of PVR-150s is probably the best price performance point.

so maybe a little of both?
would 2 PVR-250s be ok?

like maybe 2 of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815116602 ?

or, should I just go all-out and get two of these:
http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=46
even though I am not looking for an HD solution right now - I just want to record two shows on two different channels at the same time and watch them in decent better-than-vcr quality.

I am looking for a tier-1 solution here - I am a newbie (mostly)!

Thanks for any input anyone may have...

OH, and I am planning on using the newest R5A30.1
and my HD is SATA - - if that helps?

Aside from costing you extra money... Say about $35-$45 per card versus the PVR-150. A 350 and any 150, or a 150 (non-MCE) and a 500 would cost about the same and give you more bang for your buck. Two 150's would definitely cost less.

I've got a 250 and a 150 in the production machine due to historical factors, and a HD-3000 (for HDTV) currently sitting in a box due to antenna and card conflict issues. While the 150 seems to be slightly more suseptible to firmware glitches, that's probably just a matter of firmware/driver maturity.