Plextor USB 2.0 Tuner - a few questions

[Mortanis]

I've never gone with a USB based tuner - I've got a Hauppage 250 and 150 in my system right now. But, I just stumbled across this gem: 40$ with a 30$ mail in rebate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814144506

I'm guessing the main difference between a USB based and PCI based is hardware based encoding of mpeg-2? My system isn't powerful (posted in signature), so I'm unsure if adding one without hardware encoding is a good idea. I don't honestly NEED a third tuner.. I've only had to reschedule a handful of times, but for 10$ after rebate... why not?

Are there any other concerns I should think about? I assume USB is fast enough to handle what I need - i record at 2gb an hour, SD television. I'm about to create a NAS system with NASLite, and I'm also worried adding a third tuner will slaughter my speed if i'm writing too many streams across the network. Maybe I should just put a few PCI IDE cards into my existing case and slap a few 500gig drives in there.

[BobPhoenix]

See discussion here about it. I don't think your going to want the one you posted a link too.

[Mortanis]

Gotcha. Was afraid the non-hardware encoding would be a problem. Thanks!