Have you ever wondered if you can have two capture cards in your system? The answer is likely "not always", but I presently have both an ASUS TV FM card and a Leadtek TV2000XP Expert card installed - and both are functioning. I'm trying to decide which to keep, neither is perfect.

I am looking for something to watch & record TV with, so my perspective is biased in that direction. From that viewpoint the Leadtek card has a disadvantage in that it is very sensitive to "ground hum" or "ground loop noise". I took out my ground isolation transformers and took a set of videos. Below I will post two images of night scenes captured by the cards.

NOTE - These images have had the brightness and contrast adjusted to highlight the noise. They were originally of of "night shots" from a nature program, which is why they seem of such poor quality. The reception actually is very good for both tuners.

This is the image from the ASUS card. Note the two light bands towards the bottom. These are stationary. There is sometimes a set of fine zigzag lines top to bottom that do not appear in the other card.


This is the image from the Leadtek card. Note the random horizontal bands. These jump around all over the place, and are very noticable and annoying in this picture. Note that while this test is performed under non-optimal conditions, when I put all my isolation transformers back in and have everything back in "ground loop" free condition I still get a little such noise on a number of channels with this card.


From the point of view of the TV image enjoyment I would certainly choose ASUS. Did I say also that the ASUS image appears to be a little sharper to my untrained eye. This is especially apparent in the YUY2 mode, or when viewed with the Leadtek TV viewing program. The Leadtek card does however have an advantage in that it picks up all the channels, my ASUS card does not pick up USA cable HRC channel 2, which has a video frequency of 54 Mhz. So what I have is hardware wise ASUS meets my needs better, but my sample it seems is missing a channel... the PBS channel.

Now software wise the software provided by Leadtek is pretty usable, though as I said it blurs the image a little. Maybe future revisions will communicate with the card in RGB24 mode, which it seems to do well. The software on the ASUS, well I'm a little confused. I was expecting PowerVCR II, but cannot find it. Others here have reviewed the ASUS Home Theater package, so I won't bother.

Let me know if you can suggest any further tests before I take one or the other of the cards from my system. I have yet to decide which comprimise to keep.

----- Note added 1/26/04

I should also point out that the ASUS AV connector uses a minature connector that does not have an alignment key. I discovered this after fumbling around trying to plug it in for 5 minutes while bending all the pins into a clump in the middle. 30 more minutes of needle nose pliers time was required to get it to plug into the board. The leadtek plug is keyed and easily fits into both cards.