LEADTEK WINFAST "DELUXE" TV2000XP TV/FM MULTIMEDIA CARD - RETAIL BOX (UPDATE: NOW $42.00 shipped!) @ Newegg!

[Whitneymuse]

Muse. The Conexant CX881/CX883 is the next generation chip, after the Brooktree. It provides a larger and greater density/pixel saturation. Go with what you like. I really want to know if anyone's made the comparison adn their impressions.

 

[SDOG34]

Yup, those reviews are from ppl who bought the card when it was $20 more expensive than the winfast, not the $5 it is now. Better video quality for $5...that's all I needed to hear to go for the Asus.

 

[hd54321]

Ok, a few words about the ASUS Card...

Just to make things clear, I have purchased both the Leadtek and ASUS TV cards and I want to share my comments. The ASUS is currently being returned to AMEX for refund (purchase protection program, yeah!). As soon as I heard about this deal, I jumped on the ASUS because of the supposed better software. When I rec'd the package I was truly impressed. When I installed the PowerVCR and the update from the CyberLink website, I soon learned that I could NOT record ANYTHING with the software.

Whenever I would hit the record button or scheduled a show in PowerVCR, the program would give me an error message "Could not render preview stream" (or something along those lines). Even though I googled the error message, searched through the ASUS boards, the Cyberlink boards and found no solution for the problem. I contacted CyberLink support via email and rec'd a response 2 weeks later from a CyberLink rep. stating that they did NOT support the ASUS TV880 card.

As soon as I heard this, I purchased the Leadtek card and I am extremely happy with it. I really have not noticed any difference between the two cards (picture quality wise)except for the fact that the software integrates very well with the provided software. I also noticed that the Winfast software is MUCH more user friendly when it comes to recording. It integrates with Titantv.com (which PowerVCR DOES NOT DO! - this is a big issue since you can't schedule shows out of the web interface for PowerVCR).

Just my .02

HD

 

[hd54321]

Ok people got a quick question... PLEASE HELP!!

What is the best capture setting for getting VCD's (45-50 minutes of high quality video on once VCD). The pre programmed VCD setting in the software has terrible quality and I haven't found an easy way to tweak it. Oh yeah, no DivX settings please, just MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 so it can be played on my DVD player.

Someone please help. Thanks!!

-HD

 

[Whitneymuse]

Thanks hd...I really wanted to believe that ASUS...and really Prolink had gotten their software worked out...I just received an email from Prolinks product manager from Taiwan and of course he (Jason) claims that it will work out so very well...I want to use this with a home theater PC driving a very large screen, so that's why I am interested in the Conexant CX881/883 chip that the Prolink uses.

If watching TV on a 19 inch Trinitron was my goal, then I think I'd choose the Leadtek just because it works with provided software (and I still may).

hd...did you get anything on just regular broadcast/cable? the product on www.newegg.com has gotten very good reviews. It looks like I'm going to have to buy one of these myself.

 

[TruthSeeker]

For you guys using a cable splitter that hooks in between the cable out of the wall to your cable modem and tv2000xp card, are you able to view all the channels you pay for? I have tried every possible setting (HRC and IRC and Cable) but my channels from channel 26 to 81 are scrambeled. What the heck is wrong? Please help me because I have to return it soon to get a refund. Thanks!!

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

Originally posted by: SpideyCU
GtPrOjEcTX, my sound falls out of sync when recording to DivX, but unlike for you, it's a permanant thing for me - resetting the playbar won't help. My solution is just to take the resulting file into VirtualDub and do a direct-stream copy, changing the framerate with the option "Change framerate so that video and audio durations match". It's quick, takes about 20 seconds to actually make the copy of the file (I usually go into VirtualDub anyway to cut out the commercials), and the resulting file plays fine for me.

cool, thanks. works like a charm. actually reduced the file size by 32 meg as well.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

Originally posted by: TruthSeeker
For you guys using a cable splitter that hooks in between the cable out of the wall to your cable modem and tv2000xp card, are you able to view all the channels you pay for? I have tried every possible setting (HRC and IRC and Cable) but my channels from channel 26 to 81 are scrambeled. What the heck is wrong? Please help me because I have to return it soon to get a refund. Thanks!!

try using a cable you know is good (don't split it) and see if that works.

 

[jemeisterman]

I bought this card and am having a few problems with the Audio.

I and installed it and am running on an Athlon 800, 512RAM, Creative SB Live! Value, and NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64 32M. I can get my cable channels just fine, except the voices in the audio sounds like they're talking like the chipmunks...or people on helium. The FM Receiver doesn't work either for me. The software sort of just freezes. I'm not sure if these two are related or not. This was the second card that I tried (returned the last one).

Has anyone had any issues like this? I do have the most up to date drivers for the tv card and for my sound card. Any help or suggestions would be appreicated it.

Thanks!

 

[TruthSeeker]

Originally posted by: GtPrOjEcTX

Originally posted by: TruthSeeker
For you guys using a cable splitter that hooks in between the cable out of the wall to your cable modem and tv2000xp card, are you able to view all the channels you pay for? I have tried every possible setting (HRC and IRC and Cable) but my channels from channel 26 to 81 are scrambeled. What the heck is wrong? Please help me because I have to return it soon to get a refund. Thanks!!

try using a cable you know is good (don't split it) and see if that works.

I tried that also and still garbled. Any other ideas?

 

[rcraig]

Originally posted by: jemeisterman
I bought this card and am having a few problems with the Audio.

I and installed it and am running on an Athlon 800, 512RAM, Creative SB Live! Value, and NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64 32M. I can get my cable channels just fine, except the voices in the audio sounds like they're talking like the chipmunks...or people on helium. The FM Receiver doesn't work either for me. The software sort of just freezes. I'm not sure if these two are related or not. This was the second card that I tried (returned the last one).

Has anyone had any issues like this? I do have the most up to date drivers for the tv card and for my sound card. Any help or suggestions would be appreicated it.

Thanks!

Check your sound blaster EAX settings. I know in mine there is a sound scheme that makes all voices sound like chipmunks. Kinda fun to play with. Does this do it in all sounds on your computer or just this card?

RCraig

 

[yepper]

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: yepper

Originally posted by: Muse
Does anyone get 4x playback? I don't get 4x in playback of Winfast PVR recorded programs or timeshifted programs. I have two machines with this card, both running Windows 2000 SP3 (see my rigs in sig) and both are limited to -4x -2x 1x 2x playback. No 4x.

Me and my win2k sp3 machine get the same thing. Add that to the bug list.

Yeah, let's gather these bugs together! What others do we have? I discovered some disconcerting stuff last night. If I hit the "Display" button on the remote, it will say "Mono" on the screen even if the broadcast is in stereo and I'm hearing it in stereo!! I hit the "MTS" button the the remote and guess what? Onscreen it says "Stereo"! Fab! Trouble is, the sound has become MONO!! Try to get stereo back. Uh, how?! Playing with the MTS button doesn't help. The only solution I've found is starting playback of a recorded program and then stopping it. Then I'm getting stereo again watching live TV but hitting Display on the remote makes "Mono" appear on the screen. Is this nuts? You betcha. I think we should compile a list of bugs and bug the @#$%! out of these people until they fix them. Yeah, I can use workarounds as best I can determine them but there are so many bugs I think they demand a rewrite or at least a recompile with fixed code.

I think we should also hammer them about missing features. For my part, I would like a keyboard shortcut to pause playback. I'm sure I could come up with a lot of others but I've only started playing with the PVR. I tried the timeshifting feature but it was so buggy I gave up. Try going into configuration while timeshifting and you are in for a very rude surprise!

Don't forget the one about recording FM doesn't turn off at the scheduled time. Of course, it's intermittent. More than a few times, I've come in after the scheduled FM program should be done and the thing is still recording!

 

[tranceport]

i bought one....

 

[jundoshum]

this was a great thread corinthos. i bought one a while back... it's not tivo but it's great just to check out tv... i wish it had am radio too so i could record jim rome. i wish it did a better job at recording without the commercials. thanks a lot

 

[everman]

This has to be some kind of record for longest HD thread? Or close to it. It is a great deal imo since I use the thing every day.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: jundoshum
this was a great thread corinthos. i bought one a while back... it's not tivo but it's great just to check out tv... i wish it had am radio too so i could record jim rome. i wish it did a better job at recording without the commercials. thanks a lot

Dealing with commercials in the PVR is an issue. I wish they had a feature where a button is provided that skips 30 seconds with each press. I have a VCR with that feature. My current strategy is to split the recordings into 3 GB files (split by filesize is a feature of the latest application) using Optimal Quality and dragging the position bar pointer until I'm beyond the commercial break and then hitting -4x rewind mode until the last bit of the last commercial appears and hitting play. It's serviceable in lieu of better features. Without splitting a long recording into 45 or so minute segments it becomes very hard to manage commercial breaks. If your Winfast Work Area is on a FAT32 partition, you automatically would get a 4 GB/segment breakout, which isn't too bad. On a FAT partition, you would get 2 GB.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Originally posted by: TruthSeeker

Originally posted by: GtPrOjEcTX

Originally posted by: TruthSeeker
For you guys using a cable splitter that hooks in between the cable out of the wall to your cable modem and tv2000xp card, are you able to view all the channels you pay for? I have tried every possible setting (HRC and IRC and Cable) but my channels from channel 26 to 81 are scrambeled. What the heck is wrong? Please help me because I have to return it soon to get a refund. Thanks!!

try using a cable you know is good (don't split it) and see if that works.

I tried that also and still garbled. Any other ideas?

How do you guys have this thing hooked up to recieve all your cable channels!!!!!!!

 

[hd54321]

What is the best capture setting for good quality VCD's (45-50 minutes of high quality video on one VCD). The pre programmed VCD setting in the software has terrible quality and I haven't found an easy way to tweak it. Oh yeah, no DivX settings please, just MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 so it can be played on my DVD player.

Someone please help. Thanks!!

-HD

 

[ChoppedBroccoli]

For all you guys recording directly to the divx format:

What kind of hardware are you using and what are the encoding settings for the divx codec?

Whenever I try to record a file to divx format on the fly, it suffers from:
a) the progressive sync problems
b) BUT more importantly, it suffers from skipping in recording/playback especially when recording sports games

Is my hardware capable? .... Athlon 2000+, 512 MB ram, 80GB WD HD 7200 rpm 8mb cache, 128mb ti4400?


Also, after searching and searching about how to successfully convert recorded mpeg2 files (the only format which is lossless for me) to divx mpeg4 without audio sync problems, I have read that it is impossible on some tv tuner cards...mpeg2->divx conversions will always result in permanent audio sync problems (ive tried all the tricks in VD to try to correct the audio sync problems but none of them work) because of something to do with the way the tv tuner cards encode mpeg2 files.

 

[SpideyCU]

Originally posted by: GtPrOjEcTX

Originally posted by: SpideyCU
GtPrOjEcTX, my sound falls out of sync when recording to DivX, but unlike for you, it's a permanant thing for me - resetting the playbar won't help. My solution is just to take the resulting file into VirtualDub and do a direct-stream copy, changing the framerate with the option "Change framerate so that video and audio durations match". It's quick, takes about 20 seconds to actually make the copy of the file (I usually go into VirtualDub anyway to cut out the commercials), and the resulting file plays fine for me.

cool, thanks. works like a charm. actually reduced the file size by 32 meg as well.

No problem. You noticed the size reduction too, huh? My half hour recordings that came out originally as 130'ish MB normally go to around 117'ish MB just by syncing up the sound. Hey, whatever works.

 

[SpideyCU]

Originally posted by: ChoppedBroccoli
For all you guys recording directly to the divx format:

What kind of hardware are you using and what are the encoding settings for the divx codec?

Whenever I try to record a file to divx format on the fly, it suffers from:
a) the progressive sync problems
b) BUT more importantly, it suffers from skipping in recording/playback especially when recording sports games

Is my hardware capable? .... Athlon 2000+, 512 MB ram, 80GB WD HD 7200 rpm 8mb cache, 128mb ti4400?

That should be fine. I don't think your hardware is the problem for the skipping, at least not the raw speed of it. Mine is comparable and I haven't run into that.

I haven't been able to find an easy to way to convert from these MPEG-2 to DivX either. So, um, yeah, my post is worthless.

 

[ChoppedBroccoli]

Originally posted by: SpideyCU

Originally posted by: ChoppedBroccoli
For all you guys recording directly to the divx format:

What kind of hardware are you using and what are the encoding settings for the divx codec?

Whenever I try to record a file to divx format on the fly, it suffers from:
a) the progressive sync problems
b) BUT more importantly, it suffers from skipping in recording/playback especially when recording sports games

Is my hardware capable? .... Athlon 2000+, 512 MB ram, 80GB WD HD 7200 rpm 8mb cache, 128mb ti4400?

That should be fine. I don't think your hardware is the problem for the skipping, at least not the raw speed of it. Mine is comparable and I haven't run into that.

I haven't been able to find an easy to way to convert from these MPEG-2 to DivX either. So, um, yeah, my post is worthless.

Ok thanks...any ideas on what is causing my divx recording problems? I have absolutely nothing running in the background....I've even tried increasing the thread priority for the winfast software to no avail.


As far as the the mpeg2->divx conversion...simply by what I've read on internet searches and by experience, it seems that the winfast tv2000xp card just encodes to mpeg2 video in such a way that it loses audio sync when I try to convert it to anything else...looks like I may need to look into buying a dvd-rw drive to get this 5gb basketball game and 1.5gb slam dunk contest videos onto viewable dvd's and off my computer HD. hehe

 

[Lvis]

I bought one. Got it a week ago. So far, no problems at all. I'm using xp pro, with a gf3, sb audigy, if that helps.

 

[DorkBoy]

got 1 and LOVE IT

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: DorkBoy
got 1 and LOVE IT

Post 600: Got 2 and LOVE THEM! One for both my machines. Now I'll have TV on both and can record two different programs simultaneously, e.g. one TV, one FM, etc. I use Total Recorder to record FM from the FM signal sent to my soundcard. Total Recorder is very robust and configurable and pretty cheap ($12).