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You may have already received this reply, but I'm not going to read every one looking for a duplicate. Try the ATI Radeon line of video cards. I have an 8500 DV in a 2.0 Ghz P4, and video conversion is a snap for me. It will work with both analog and digital video, plus I have a TV tuner, Programmable "VCR", something like "Tivo", and and RF system remote. Right now it's sitting at home waiting to record "Jay Jay the Jet Plane" from 2 to 2:30. Granted it lacks some speed for 3D gaming compared to cards of similar vintage, but for me it's a good trade off. It's sort of a Swiss army knife, but it's stable in my system.

I actually had more trouble finding software that would work with my Pioneer A05 DVD burner. I use Roxio DVD builder. Whenever I run into problems it always boils down to getting the video capture settings right.

I'm no PC expert, but when advanced video features are a priority, I think that the quality of the motherboard, chipset and associated video drivers can't be discounted. The guy who built my system tried to steer me towards all Intel, and away from bleeding edge tech, which at the time was 800 Mhz bus speeds. I wound up getting an Asus P4S333 which has an SiS chipset. For me this system has been rock solid stable. Of course the 512 MB of RAM and 120 GB of RAID 0 HD don't hurt either.