Pros: Really really fast encoding

Cons: Costs alot won't work on an x58 system

Overall Review: I do alot of reencoding. I labored over buying this board. Finally, bit the bullet and bought it. Absolutely no regrets. I have an i7 x58 based system and as I was prewarned the board prolly wouldn't work in that system. And in fact it didn't work in that system so I put it in a C2D system. This board can encode anything 2-3 times faster in the C2D system running @ 3Ghz than software only on the i7 system running at 3.2Ghz. If you're on the fence about this board, go ahead and get it. You won't regret it.

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: Compared to my Q9550@3.6 GHZ transcoding is about 4x faster @1920.1080 @highest profile. Video quality looks great and CPU load is down to 60% at normal priority. 5 1/2 -6 hours CPU vs. 1 1/2 hours SpursEngine.

Cons: No multichannel audio. Why would anyone want to transcode to BluRay format with stereo sound?

Overall Review: Will have to use another program to rip audio and mux back together with video. Audio ripping is fast enough with my CPU, so once I get that procdure down I'll be very happy.

Pros: Absolutely wonderful. Got it out of the box, fast install, tried a few samples of transcoding from SD to HD type files. Fast and awesome. If you have a CUDA based card, its even faster.

Cons: Annoying request for license verification from Pegasys. We have a closed intranet and its a pain reconnecting all of the time. It does have problems with uncompressed 8bpp YUV422 AVI files. Sometimes takes em sometimes not. For our 10bpp AVI files its always takes them. Tech support is available but slow in responding.

Pros: This card does the job just like it says it does. Movies come out just as good as the original when transcoding. I could not be happier!

Cons: It takes time to learn the capabilities of this card. I have found you do not need to record at high levels for good results. I record at 12000 and transcode at 12000. The default with blue ray is 32000. I can not tell the difference between the bitrates. The blue ray file size can eat up a hard drive quickly. Once I learned this lesson, my file size went from 25-40gb down to a manageable 8-15gb. Forget divix transcoding..... it takes all day.

Overall Review: I have the Hauppauge HD recorder hooked up to my satellite/cable box with component RGB. The sound is only stereo from the set top box. This records in ts. After I record the movie, I open up the transcoding program and I limit the filters I use. I then use the spurs engine for transcoding. I like to record in Mpeg2. I set the bitrate to 12000. I then max out everything else. I use the spurs super resolution engine to complete my set up. I have found this to work fantastic and I am starting to get quite a selection of HD quality movies now for my personal use.