Visiontek Xtasy Everything PAL/NTSC question

[nickel-01]

Hello all,
I am planning to buy the Xtasy Everthing and got a few questions:

1) Will it take PAL signal as well as NTSC signal input? I recently bought a PAL PS2 (to get the Messiah chip and it won't display color on my TV. I plan to use the Xtasy Everything input to play my games.

2) Is it true that I can use the breakout box on future GeForce cards w/ the Personal Cinema features? (As long as they keep using the Philips TV IO chipset?

3) The price! The lowest I can find is $97... where did you guys found those $62 prices? Can someone please email me?

Thanks!

[Greyhair]

I couldn't find it for 62 either. I just got it off ebay for 81 though, might check there.

[thestallion]

any replies to the PAL/NTSC question? I am wondering the same thing myself and have sent an inquiry to VisionTek, but have yet to get a response. I know the ATI AIW card I have now will handle both as well as SECEM, it's switchable in the options. If the Xtasy card is manufactured as one model for all countries, it should handle it (IE if the exact same card is manufactured for the US and Europe, it has to).

As far as price, Comp-U-Plus just dropped from $149 to $91... I'd buy one right now if I knew for sure it would do PAL...

update: just found a thread at http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=76900 where user cifcap says

I'm curious about the Xtasy Everything. I own one (but haven't installed it in my new system)... I purchased this thing because it can handle both NTSC and PAL according to the information on the Visiontek website

I saw no such info at visiontek.com (doesn't mean it isn't there), but perhaps this is a good sign...

[floridastyle]

i have been using the Xtasy Everything since I bought it in March and I love it. It does play all international formats in NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. Fear not... it is an excellent card for the money. The quality from its HDVP chip is sweet. I switched from Hauppage when I bought it because of its quality from capturing and outputing to analog on VHS. I bought it before the G4 came out so it was priced at 170 US dollars in March at CompUSA aka "Comp USeless." Even if you can not find it for 62 bucks do not be such a mooch to wait around for that price. The quality of the capture card is excellent. Since it has a Philips tuner it is guaranteed to be an international TV card.

[thestallion]

Thanks for the input, floridastyle. I finally received the same info from VisionTek and I've got one on the way ($75 new on Ebay +$8 to ship). Now I'm just worried how well it will deal with my new dual Athlon machine if/when I can get it built. here's what VisionTek said:

Pal and NTSC
WDM drivers only
Don't recommend this card in dual proc motherboard because they don't
support AGP as well as single proc systems.

These tech people are pretty verbose, ain't they? This kind of confused me because, if dual proc boards don't support AGP well, what are they supposed to use for graphics cards???
Based on what I've read over at http://www.2cpu.com it sounds like capturing on a dual system is problematic regardless of setup but for encoding, it seems like the only way to go to me...
Really trying out the VisionTek card will have to wait though, my tired old PIII/450 with the 10GB HD just won't do the things I want to anymore....