Hauppauge’s WinTV-PVR-250 TV tuner and capture card is the product of choice for HTPC enthusiasts and Windows Media Center system builders, and for good reason. There certainly are lower-priced solutions available, but the PVR-250 has quite an advantage over them with its hardware based MPEG encoder, saving valuable processor performance for other tasks.

Onboard analog connectors allow you to not only watch, record and pause TV, but they allow you to record from other sources such as VCRs and analog video cameras.

And while Hauppauge’s bundled software doesn’t quite cut it as a TiVo replacement, a PVR front end such as Snapstream’s BeyondTV3 can make your PC a much more powerful – and upgradeable – centerpiece to your home theater.