Leadtek Winfast "deluxe" Tv2000xp Tv/fm Multimedia Card

[DDogg]

OK, seems like you capturing folks are having some fun so I ordered this card (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?description=14-122-132&DEPA=1) Anybody have any Pro or Con comments? Any "gotchas" I should be aware of?

Ah crap, I see a lot of threads now that I search on winfast instead of leadtech. Sorry. Would still appreciate any comment as some of those reference threads are rather disjointed.

[Angelus]

I purchased this card about 2 or 3 months ago from newegg.com also. This is my first card that I've bought and tried out but I'm pretty happy with the results. I think it is really hard to find a card that's better in the same price range ($45). I use the standard leadtek drivers b/c I had no luck installing/getting to work the btwincap or the iulab's generic drivers. For me its about the quality of the actual cable (Comcast) that is questionable...some channels are good while others are not. So I recommend it for anyone who wants to capture shows and not pay a high price.

Angelus

[Arachnotron]

I had no luck installing/getting to work the btwincap or the iulab's generic drivers.

If I remember correctly this card uses a CX23881 chip. These drivers are for BT878 based cards.

[trevlac]

I believe the "Deluxe" uses the Fusion 878A. The "Expert" uses the 10-bit chip.

You can go over to VCDHelp and read what a number of (generally non-technical) people have said. 100+ posts on TV2000 cards. The Deluxe and plain TX200XP should be the same except for the FM.

[Arachnotron]

I stand corrected :o

edit:
I would go for the expert in that case. The cx23881 is the succesor to the fusion BT878a and a much nore capable chip anyway.

But of course, there are other cards based on this chip.

[DDogg]

Thanks for the replies. I just spent an hour surfing around and I still could not find out what the heck chip is used in this critter. I figure what the hell, for 45.00 at my door I can't go wrong. It should help me get much better acquainted with capturing from cable. I've got the encoding part down pretty well already :)

Yeah, I finally verified it is the BT878a

[kastro68]

I think there are two versions of this card

The old card only has mono sound while the newer one has stereo sound.

[DDogg]

Well I am impressed with this card given the price and features. It installed easily and I was surprised to see how flexible the setup was for saving to different codecs. I was able to use Huffy up to 720x480 easily as well as ffVFW flavors of mpeg2 and 4 and DV.

The inbuilt support for the Titan TV schedules works flawlessly as well as the very full functioned remote. The picture quality is about as good as I expected, maybe better.

Btw, I tried quite a bit of additional software I had available, including PowerDVDII V 3.0. I preferred the software that came with it which is unusual for bundled software. Its very intuitive and did not cause me to read a manual which I always appreciate.

I'm sure there are better cards based upon newer chips, but given the quality, software features, remote, etc., it would be hard to not give this one an A+ for Quality and value.

There is something giving me some concern. The sound seems too "hot" like a front-end of an amp is being overloaded. I wonder if it would be worth it to make an attenuation cable for hooking the sound out to sound in on the card? Anybody else have this problem?

[Angelus]

The audio is fine for me, I don't have any noticable problems with it. I'm sure you've thought of this but one thing to do is to check the "Windows Volume Control" under accessories in the start menu and see it the volume is up all the way for the line in recording...you could maybe move it down a little to ease the distortion. I'm not sure tho.

[Shayne]

I think you should always bring the sound in from the "better" audio card and let Lead due the video then you have a great combo. My herc card sounds a whole lot better recording or playing.

Peace

[Little Raven]

Originally posted by DDogg
I was able to use Huffy up to 720x480 easily as well as ffVFW flavors of mpeg2 and 4 and DV.

can I ask you which driver you use?
I have the same card but it won't allow me to capture in 720x480

[Owen]

Have you tried a WDM capture application like Virtual VCR ?

Owen

[Shayne]

http://server2.doom9.org/Soft21/Editing/VirtualDub-1.5.10.zip

http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/

[SiliconSoul]

@DDogg

i too have noticed the sound is too "HOT"
i have turned the record volume down to 26% so that it is not too high when recorded!