Video capture card vs USB device?

[franco50]

Being a newbie to the video editing game I am looking for views on recommended, and not too expensive, analogue capture cards (not interested in DV input so Firewire is out). Initially I thought of taking the external USB capture device route and have checked reviews of the HP DVD Movie Writer and also the ADS Tech DVD Express USB device but people who have bought them are not exactly singing their praises! I am now looking to buy a reliable internal capture card and editing software package, so any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.

[LoneWolf]

Video often places higher demands on transfer rate than USB 1.1 ports can deliver (max. being 12Mbps). While USB 2.0 ports (assuming your device is fully USB 2.0 compliant) deliver far more, CPU usage has generally proven to be higher than a PCI based capture card.

If you want a good solution, you'll need to spend money. Cheap solutions for capture (read: ATI TV Wonder Pro) will do okay provided you have a high-end machine, but a better choice is one of Hauppauge's WinTV PVR cards that will have hardware video encoding on it. Not the cheapest, but a good solution if you're serious about encoding to MPEG-2.