Is cheap firewire card does same good quality job?

[us_matrix]

Hi,

I just bought a camcorder and going to order a Firewire card. I found one in ebay selling for $5. Is cheap $5 firewire card produce same picture quaity compare to $50 card. All that does is transfering footage from DV to PC. Do you guys recommand the card from below OR any inexpensive card you can recommand please?

Here is what i found in ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=170&item=5147972560&rd=1

[canadateck]

You can find them at local stores for the same price after you add shipping.Most are the same, be it a 50 dollar card or a 10 dollar one.

[budz]

Hi,

I just bought a camcorder and going to order a Firewire card. I found one in ebay selling for $5. Is cheap $5 firewire card produce same picture quaity compare to $50 card. All that does is transfering footage from DV to PC. Do you guys recommand the card from below OR any inexpensive card you can recommand please?

Here is what i found in ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=170&item=5147972560&rd=1

in my opinion get a better brand firewire card like a ADAPTEC one. COMPUSA had firewire cards for dirt cheap in the last few sales they've had. if you're in the USA check out COMPUSA. i've only used ADAPTEC firewire cards in all of my computers that i build for myself and others. i've had no problems or incompatibilty issues using it for firewire devices.

[kupton]

A cheap card or an expensive one has no effect on picture quality. It's just transfering data from your DV cam. The only thing I can think of is compatibility. JVC DV cams are known to be really picky about what kind of chipset the card uses. That said I have a really cheap card that uses the same Via chipset as the one shown on eBay and it works fine for me.

[SuperKevin]

I may guess it could be the speed problem. I am not sure of firewire card but I do observed difference of good and bad USB card. Poor USB card tends to use much more CPU power so my PC almost freezes when I transfer huge data over it. With good card, it is almost "background" that I feel no slow down to my PC. Also, even all the cards are said to be USB 2.0, I feel cheaper ones can only get the claimed speed as its possible "top speed", while better cards have a much higher average speed.
Firewire card, I may guess, may have similar things.

[upshot]

I've never had a problem with my cheepo compusa usb/firewire card...