any input on Studio PCTVpro TV/capture card ?

[ktnwin]

Hi all out there,

I am thinking about getting a Studio PCTVpro card to

1) view TV programs on a PC monitor
2) record my favorites to MPEG-1 then to VCD for archiving (instead of to VCR tapes)

Does anyone have opinions on:
1) quality
2) easy installation
3) ....

All inputs are welcome.

[WMike]

Here's my experience:

The quality is great for the price. It installed easily but was modestly difficult to configure, some of which may have been due to my inexperience. The software it comes with sucks, except the part for TV viewing which is fine. I found it impossible to configure using VirtualDub for capture, but gave up when I found out about AVI_IO, which is much easier for me to use anyway.

My biggest beef with the card is that the dang thing will capture the fields in the wrong order. However, on my card this has been very consistent, every time. I remedy the situation by using the field swap option available on Huffyuv, which I use for compression.

Good luck
Mike