Correct,you could just record with Media encoder or your favorite software.If it were me...because I own so many tuner cards,my next one would have to be ATI chipset (they sell an external model) because you can only have one brooktree chipset tuner installed at a time,so then I could use 2 at the same time.
But Hauppauge WinTV has an external usb cheap model they sell too.
Heres their homepage:
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/prods_usbs.html