I've been slowly working thru the capabilities & issues of using the hybrid 650 pci with the TV pack - unfortunately I've suffered an injury so no idea when I'll be able to finish & give a full write up of whatever I find, or in-other-words, don't hold your breath.
I can tell you this much though... In many circumstances you're probably better off skipping the TV pack &/or using alternative software with the pci hybrid - or just take advantage of the upcoming sales to treat yourself to new tuner hardware. Remember, MS didn't have a hybrid to work with testing the original VMC (according to a MS employee post at the Green Button), & they released the TV Pack only to OEMs for sale with compatible hardware. If you're satisfied with just viewing, & maybe playing back from the recording PC: QAM, Analog Cable, or S-vid [& only one of those 3 with the hybrid], then you'll probably be all right.
The reason the prior VMC hack worked (for ATSC OTA & Analog Cable), was VMC relied solely on the registry for your tuners, plus the EPG set-up VMC relies on to do much of anything was more flexible. The hack basically was a matter of adding your 2nd tuner to the registry & updating the guide.
With the TV Pack there is a database that also tracks your tuner/EPG setup, so add whatever you want to the registry, and at best you'll gain nothing, at worst you'll have to re-setup one of the tuners. I'm able to switch the tuner & guide, but so far it's in the earliest stages, requireing a dual boot machine, and swapping out both registry keys & database files - & you can't simply swap out the files in Vista.
And then there are the issues of the new WTV file format. In essense there's a new class of filter installed with the TV Pack whose job is to decrypt the DRM that WTV adds. And to complicate matters, there appear to be issues with the mpg2 encapsulated in the WTV files. IF you use the 650's hardware-based mpg2 encoding of an analog signal, it's not so bad since you can re-encode the edited file at DVD bit-rates from the original 12. The same goes for DVB from ATSC or QAM - if like me your SD files have a bit rate of 10+ and you're going to DVD, &/or you re-encode HD to DivX/Xvid/AVC.
I'm unsure yet whether you can preserve the original QAM stream, remove the DRM, & still have a good (not just playable on your PC) file... and yes, while it doesn't matter for a lot of people or in a lot of situations, there is a difference when it comes to editing, & it may matter to BD players.
