Let me start by saying, I love THF. I really enjoyed, "Building a Digital Video Capture System - Part I & II". Both articles were very helpful and full of information. However, I am left w/ a few questions:

I will be upgrading my system soon and am curious which route I should go. I understand that Tom thinks AMD is the bigger bang for the buck, but on the same review AMD showed some pitiful numbers in Flask compared to the P4 ( http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010827/p4-10.htm ). I understand Flask is just one program and this may have something to do w/ the P4 optimizations. That is why I am here! Will the P4 be a better processor for encoding & decoding video? My choices will be the following: 1) Go w/ the new KT266a, whatever Asus will offer and buy a 1.4/266 Athlon. 2) Buy a P4x266, whatever Asus will offer (if they have the balls to do so) and a P4 1.7. 3) Wait for Q12002 for the Intel DDR platform, I sure hate to wait that long, but my PIII 800\Asus CUSL2 combo isn't that bad! I wouldn't mind an RDRAM solution, but can't bring myself to pay double the cost of DDR.

Secondly, I bought a DV Camcorder and am about to go and buy a Firewire card. I want the Pyro PCI card (only), I already bought some software! Do you guys know if there is a difference between the Pyro basicDV & the Pyro ProDV, besides the software bundle? I am looking for the card alone & could care less about the bundle. However, I also want quality & don't care to get a handicapped card. The site ( http://www.adstech.com/products/intro/products.asp ) doesn't go into comparisons, but both say it comes w/ a "PYRO 1394 DV PCI add-in card". So, I am guessing they are the same!??!

Finally, I will be encoding to a 40GB Maxtor ATA100 Hard drive and will play w/ some VCD's for my DVD player. Although, I will leave everything on the HD for future burning onto DVD-R media (when DVD burners become more affordable). What's a good program to help me set up a DVD like interface (i.e. Menu's, Titles, Chapter Selection, etc.)?

Thanks for the time and for your suggestions.

1. p4, same like everything on intel platform, is more reliable and stable. athlon is a bit unstable, and the chipsets are slower (ide communication). dual p3 is good if you take fastest processors, but it seems like they are more expensive right now. p4 is, as i saw it working, very good for vieo editing.
2. if you want picture quality, take dps or canopus, they have very good codec.
3. don't try to leave video on the disk, the files are very large. put it on the tape.