HVR-3000 and HVR-4000, any other difference beside the tuner?

[Fransco]

Hello, I was interested in knowing if there's any difference between the HVR-3000 and HVR-4000 beside the S2 HD Tuner, especially regarding to hardware decoding. My windows media center HTPC has a pretty slow CPU - an AMD Sempron 3000+ - so while I can't take advantage of the S2 tuner that requires a far better processor if one of those cards offered hardware decoding for analog TV and composite input that would greatly help.

Also, is there anything else that should make me favor one card instead of the other, like better tuners chips or better support for newer versions of media center?

Thanks

[cdldt]

As far as the analogue part is concerned, the HVR-3000 and 4000 are identical to the HVR-1100 (Conexant version). This means no hardware encoding, unlike the HVR-1300.

[Fransco]

As far as the analogue part is concerned, the HVR-3000 and 4000 are identical to the HVR-1100 (Conexant version). This means no hardware encoding, unlike the HVR-1300.

Hello and thanks for the answer. Do you think a sempron 3000+ would be enough for the software encoding to work well even on win7 mce or do you suggest getting an HVR 1300 instead?

[cdldt]

I'm not sure about the CPU requirements, but a single-core CPU isn't going to give much breathing space during capture.

If you don't intend to capture DVB-S, you are much better off getting the HVR-1300.