Hi,
My tuppence worth…
I’ve been using Compro video cards (C100 and C500) for a decade and counting, Currently I have 8 installed they’ve all worked perfectly. They’re very old fashioned but cheap (£30 new) however I don’t know if they are made anymore.
I’ve also found the latest Climax Digital usb grabbers have proved reliable, again cheap at ~£30 BUT only buy direct from the manufactures website as there are gazzilions of clones that are truly crap. As a test I’ve been running a comparison between the venerable C500 and a usb frame grabber and I can see no difference.
There is also an alternative to UFO capture if you really want to keep costs down. This is handyavi. It is nowhere near as good as UFO (and that’s not a critisism it just not a single purpose entity like UFO Cap) and can’t be used for all the analysis.
I’ve used it in “emergencies” and for plain captures it’s fine when tuned properly (It’s also good for other astrostuff which is where I mostly use it).
So there are a few ways to get up an running on a budget but it all depends on what you want to do long term. You can always invest some more as your experience and/or interests develop.
Cheers,
Bill.