I have a single core 3.2gig pc with 1gig of memory, a bit more then 2 years ago a high end system, now just an entry level system.
I"m planning to switch to Hdv in the future but am not sure what will be the best investment since my current pc obviously is not up to it to handle hdv material.

If I would buy the cineform aspect hd and use that together with Premiere cs3 on my current pc, will the 500dollar cost be a better investment then buying a new core 2 duo system but without cinform aspect? (Considering that a complete pc is not that much more expensive then the cineform plugin?)

Is aspect hd really as good as everybody is telling me?

While do hope Aspect HD is as good as you hear. The test PC I use for Aspect HD 2.8GHz P4, and my home PC is like your 3.2Ghz. All I would recommend is adding an extra 1Gig, although it is not necessary.

I will add that when I used a 3GHz PC, Cineform was the only way I could edit HDV at all. When I went to a faster PC, having Cineform just made the whole thing fly.

So an investment in Cineform now, will pay off even when you upgrade your PC for another reason.

Without Cineform, even a fast PC won't seem as fast as your current one, using Cineform.

Thanks a lot for your answers, I couldn"t find it back on the cineform site but does aspect hd also support avchd?

Also editing without Cineform, and by using the m2t format directly will add generation losses quickly.

According to this thread it does:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=94824&highlight=AVCHD

And I should add that if NEO can do it, then so can Aspect HD.

We have published a Tech Note convering conversion of AVCHD to CineForm Intermediate: http://www.cineform.com/products/TechNotes/AVCHD_FileConversion.htm. You need a third-party AVCHD decoder as discussed in the Note.