Pros: 1) Faster than realtime - anywhere from 25-100% faster for 1080i & 720p recordings. Nova & Travel America shows that I grab (1920x1080x30) from PBS come in at about 53 minutes with the ads taken off the start and end. They transcode from MPEG2/AC3 to MPEG4-AVC/AAC Level 4.1 high profile at 1920x1080x30 in about 37 minutes. It's even faster if I transcode to 720p or less. 2) TMPGEnc works directly with WTV & DVRMS files through a very quick conversion and from there you can apply any/all filters & edit the timeline like any other video file. 3) The Spursengine card offloads everything it can to the card while your CPU(s) will do the rest such as audio encoding, filters, etc. This can work with the CUDA & your Nvidia card for accelerating filters with the CUDA stream processors for even less CPU load. 4) Quality is very good at reasonable bit rates. The unfavorable reviews on the web show that a still image's quality is not so good at 500kbps as other encoders. I am backing up HD c

Cons: 1) Price. $289 is steep but when you consider the software alone is going to run $150 it is a little less painful. Yes, there are free options but that's not in question here...it's all about speed. 2) TMPGEnc does not support multi channel audio. This can be fixed by demuxing the result and converting to MKV but it's additional steps that I am not interested in. 3) This card is NOT capable of encoding 2-pass VBR. Apparently it's a limitation of the hardware. With mid to high bit rates it's not as noticable but lower bit rates can show artifacting during fast scenes & 1 pass encoding. 4) I dont consider this a CON but it is only capable of MPEG2/MPEG4 accelerated output. You can still input any type of file (I've tested AVI, WMV, MPEG2 including DVD discs directly, DVRMS, & WTV).

Overall Review: So far it's well worth the price. In a few years this card will be obsolete...that's the same with any, and all, technology. But right now, in the present, this card allows me to crunch down my recordings in 20-30% of the time it would take using a software only solution. I hope a method of 2 pass variable bit rate encoding comes along becasue that is the only thing keeping me from 5-starring this product.

Pros: - Newegg shipped it fast.

Cons: - Cant install it because there's no code...just a blank space where it should have been printed. Waiting on Newegg and Bethesda to help me out. - Buyer beware. You have to download 45GB worth of data anyway...may as well have just bought it direct on Steam.

Overall Review: I'll fix this when I get resolve.

Pros: Dual Tuner with an internal splitter, QAM, small PCI-e 1x package.

Cons: A few. I knew coming in that this package would NOT work, or come, with any Avermadia software but my intention was to use it in Windows 7 Pro Media Center (7MC) and have it replace my Aver A180 but this is so bugged it's frustrating. After a few weeks of having this card installed and working in 7MC (dual QAM) it started failing to record. I fired up 7MC and tried starting live TV and it tells me no tuners available. The only thing that can fix it at this point is to uninstall the Aver A188 drivers, reinstall them, reboot, then have 7MC rescan for all channels. I have to do this about every 1-5 days. I'm not alone...look at the 60+ pages of complaints on the Greenbuttons forums. Apparently Avermedia issued a revised card so I need to try to get a hold of someone to get a replacement.

Overall Review: I'm disappointed in the quality of this card after having such good experiences with my A180 & my USB Volar. The new revision of the card may funtion better but I wrote this as a "buyer-beware" because it's possible Newegg may still have some of the old stock to ship out (like they did to me) and you can fully expect nothing but headaches if they do.