[MPlayer-users] tv card basics

[Dominique]

Hi,

I want to start encoding from TV for ACAP (As Cheap As Possible)

There are cheap tv cards with no saving/encoding at all or expensive 
ones with mpeg (only 1 or 2, I assume) encoding.

Can I get the cheap one (without encoding) and use mencoder to capture 
the stream from it and encoding it to mpeg4?

Does anyone have such a cheap card and could recommend me the brand/type?

Thanks a lot
Dominique