I wish to capture some footage from television, edit it in final cut
pro, and output it in as high a resolution as possible. As this point,
I'm leaning towards using a pvr card such as wintv150, but these cards
all output mpeg2, which does not seem to be able to be opened in final
cut. so my question is two parts, 1) what's the cheapest and easiest
way to achieve my objective and 2) is there a way to convert mpeg2 to
.mov with minimal loss of data.

thanks!

Ok.. problem [1] To capture the video...

[1] You need either a TV-tuner card on your PC / Video capture card.
[AverMedia, Philips etc..]

[2] You can also use a digital handycam [Sony / Panasonic / Samsung..]
which have a AV input.. and can take input from the AV out of your
TV.. you can then connect the Camcorder to the USB port of your PC and
use USB streaming setting to capture video onto your PC. [You will get
the details in the user manual + software bundled with the camcorder]

Now Problem [2] 

To convert the MPEG2 footage into MOV.. check out these URLs.. there
are plenty of software utilities [Freeware/shareware/commercialware]
to do the job..

http://www.burnworld.com/software/video-converters/
http://www.mp3towav.org/Xilisoft-Video-Converter/
http://www.programurl.com/mov-to-mpg-avi-wmv-converter.htm

You can adjust the settings on the programs to minimize / reduce /
avoid any data loss. [Quality loss]