LeadTek WinFast TV2000 XP Expert (PCI)

I've been heavily into computer technology for 15 years but I only decided to purchase a TV Tuner / Video Capture Card last week.

I first considered buying a TV Tuner/Video capture card about ten (10) years ago but the options then were either quite efficient but too expensive or fairly priced but poorly performing.

Pinnacle and Canopus had products that provided acceptable video results but the cheapest package would set you back $600. The bargain options then came from a company called Dazzle which offered a few models in the $50-$100 range. Unfortunately, we were disappointed with the resulting video clips in the 2 times we tested them out. I'm sure Dazzle's products have improved leaps and bounds by now.

Another major consideration worthy of note is that video capture cards rely on CPU power. Since the TV/Video capture cards then had inferior (compared to today's offerings) processing parts AND that CPU speeds (top-of-the-line then was the Pentium1 - 133Mhz with 32 MB RAM) were far slower then than now, the capturing, converting and rendering then took way longer than they do today.

Also, you can buy an 80GB drive now for the same price you had to pay for a 1GB drive back in 1995 ... and double speed (2X) CD-writers were just starting to be introduced to the market. All these factors considered, I told myself that i'd simply have to settle for recording the highlight years of Michael Jordan's basketball career on VHS.

Fast forward to 2006. We now enjoy super fast and affordable computer systems, much more efficient video and sound compression options, lightning fast video cards, cheaper yet faster and larger digital storage devices (hard disks, CD-Roms, and DVD-Roms)

My 5 year old VHS recorder died on me a few weeks back and I thought maybe it was time to check out digital video recorders. The stand-alone HD/DVD recorders are great and i'm sure i'll own one of them within 5 years but they're still rather expensive at this point.

I checked out the computer stores and listed the PCI-based cards currently in the market then relied on Google and CNET.com for help. Suffice it to say that my research led me to conclude that the WinFast TV2000XP Expert from Leadtek was my best option.

The package I purchased came with a PCI-based TV Tuner/Video capture card, remote control, software and all the necessary wires.

Installing the card should be fairly simple ... assuming you've done it before or at least watched someone do it before. For those with zero experience in opening a computer and inserting cards into slots, the manual diagrams nothing in the way of showing you how so it would be best to have someone knowlegable do this for you.

Apparently, the TV2000XP comes in 3 models where the differences lie in the connectors/connections. I ended up with arguably the most complicated one ONLY in the sense that the sound connection wasn't as simple as attaching a connecting wire from the TV card to the sound card via external line-out and line-in jacks. Mine came with a stereo-audio cable that required me to insert an unusual (I bet only those who have experience with sound cards have ever seen these wires) wire to the sound board and the other end to the TV Tuner board (the wires stay inside the PC) Again, it should be an easy task for those who've done it before.

I can't help but harp on it here as I found myself thinking while installing the card how difficult it would be for me to do it if I didn't have prior experince in this. For those in doubt, I guess there's always the slightly more expensive USB version.

Connecting the other cables are very easy.

Installation of the software is fairly straight-forward. My only complaint here is that after clicking on the PVR TV2000XP icon to install the driver and software, nothing seemed to happen for a good two minutes. This made me click on it (and other icons too) just to see any response. It's a good thing my dog came over to distract me for a few minutes because multiple warnings came on after a few minutes telling me that I had started multiple sessions of the installation process. A simple "Please Wait" or "Loading" sign would have been so much better. I only mention this as it could very well cause one to terminate the Installation Screen if you don't wait 2 or more minutes after clicking on the icon.

After that, it's only a matter of launching the program and doing a channel scan. I don't know if my PC set-up matters but the TV output on my rig (AMD Athlon Sempron 3000, 1GB Ram, GeForce 5500 256MB and 19" monitor) looked plenty nice to me.

I have a 27" TV right beside my PC and I must have looked silly spending the next 10 minutes checking back and forth between the two screens trying to spot differences. Images on the TV are obviously and expectedly superior but at least, the feed through the PC isn't bad at all. It was no XBOX360, but I sure felt real happy about my purchase. A simple yet extremely neat feature is the multiple channel scan where you get to browse through multiple (around 25 channels fit on the screen) channels at the same time.

The Manual does a decent although shallow job of explaining how to use the PVR software. There are many recording options to choose from and maybe the reason Leadtek decided to not elaborate on the pros and cons of choosing the different recording choices is that 90% of the time, you'd probably be better off sticking with the default settings. The default is on MPEG-2 at Optimal Level. The quality degrades a bit when you switch to Good Level and is very noticeable at the Normal Level. Since the file sizes don't differ much, i'll stick to the default settings. Uncompressed AVI should be better but I found MPEG-2 Optimal to look cleaner while being far smaller in size. I've yet to try but a nice touch also is the ability to record (burn) directly to CD or DVD.

2 problems I've encountered so far:

1) The program crashes each time I try to activate TimeShifting (it's supposed to record from the time I activate timeshifting so I don't have to miss anything should I need to go get some popcorn -- big difference between TS and regular record is that you can watch the TS recorded file while still watching the live broadacst of whatever it is you're watching) Too bad since this feature could eliminate the chances of my missing the knockout punch because I need to take a leak.
2) I don't know why but the files created using this program don't run in Windows Media Player (ver10) The video loads but stutters all the way. Then, i'll have to restart the PC if I want to use the PVR again.

It's great that I can watch what's being recorded as it's being recorded but I wasn't too thrilled to learn that I can't watch another live channel while i'm recording.

I recorded 2 movies from HBO, 1 30-minute news broadcast, a 2 hour NBA game, and 1 hour of boxing. I must say i'm very pleased with the results. Recorded video quality is practically identical to actual broadcast. Of ultimate gratification is being able to jump from one recorded spot to another simply by dragging slider bars -- no more laboring with rewinding and fast-forwarding tape!!!

On average, a 1 minute recording on the default setting produces a 52MB file.

3 minutes at MPEG-2 Optimal = 157MB
3 minutes at MPEG-2 Good = 137MB
3 minutes at MPEG-2 Normal = 125MB
3 minutes at Uncompressed AVI = 833MB
1 hour at MPEG-2 Optimal = 3.15GB

The program automatically stops and restarts recording to another file once the file is 4GB. I'm not sure but I guess this is to ensure that each file will fit on a DVD.

I haven't spent much time on the bundled software although I was already easily able to use it to make a clip of the boxing program I recorded where I got to delete all the commercials.

In summary, i've found that the product isn't perfect and that it doesn't deliver in eveything it claims to achieve. On installation ease, the USB version is a slightly more expensive option but could very well be the smarter way to go. That said however, I've also found that for what I need it for (record shows while i'm away or sleeping) the product comes through excellently. The best analogy I can come up with is that the VCR or VHS recorder is like driving a car with no power-steering and power-windows while the TV2000XP is like driving in an all-power assisted car ... I think we all know which one we'll choose.