Opinion on choice of capture card...

[jimbokoz]

Just trying to make a choice for a low budget capture card to use. I have three choices:

Leadtek TV2000 card (TV + FM stereo)
WinTV Go 708 (Hauppage)
Studio PCTV (Pinnacle Systems)

All seem relatively equal, except that the PCTV doesn't seem to offer stereo audio. I also cannot find out what resolution the Leadtek card can capture at (full 720x576 PAL??).

For me, the Leadtek card will be the cheapest, and is currently my first choice. Unfortunately, it appears not to have been discussed elsewhere in this forum.

I will be using the card in an Athlon 1400 system, 512mb ram, 2x30gb striped IBM HDD's and a Geforce 4 gfx card on Windows XP.

Can anyone confirm whether my choice will be a good one, or should I consider something else?

jk

[Imjin]

If you had the option, I would definately try something else. I'm not sure what your budget is, but I saw the Leadtek TV2000 you mentioned on MWave.com for around $60, so I'm assumming you're trying to keep it under a $100 or so. I only say MWave.com because I use them fairly frequently and they seem to be pretty inexpensive on a lot of hardware.

I'd go with an ATI All-In-Wonder or an ASUS personally, since I'm running both on different machines, but I haven't used the other brands you mentioned. My DVD burning box has an older 32mb ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 5100 that runs like a champ and has that sexy external dongle connector for inputs. My gaming box on the other had has an older ASUS GeForce2 V7700 that I used to use for video work before the ATI came along.

MWave has an ATI All-In-Wonder 7500 64MB DDR retail box for about $119 which is a nice card. Has a TV-Tuner, does resolutions 640x480 up to 2048x1536, digital output (SPDIF), analog stereo outputs, S-Video, composite video inputs/outputs, external stereo connector for sound cards line input/output, and a wireless RF remote control.

I don't work for MWave, but I but a lot of hardware from them for my own use and they're pretty reliable for as long as I've used em.