LEADTEK WINFAST "DELUXE" TV2000XP TV/FM MULTIMEDIA CARD - RETAIL BOX (UPDATE: NOW $42.00 shipped!) @ Newegg!

[Sappster]

PLEASE HELP ME!!!! Here's the deal. I just bought the WinFast TV2000 XP Deluxe card from Newegg this week. I hooked everything up and installed all the drivers, so everythings okay, right? WRONG!

I don't have the cable TV hooked up because I don't have TV in my room right now. (At home for summer). So I want to use the FM tuner. But there is NO Sound. HOWEVER, I can record a song on its radio and playback and I can hear it! Also, when I go into the settings if I do a volume testing then I can hear it, but when I choose ok and go back to the tuner NO sound!! PLEASE HELP! I'm so confused!

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Okay. Is there anyway to post an image in the forms? Or do you just have to provide the link? I guess it doesn't matter this time.
I have included this Image to show yall what I mean. The arrow is pointing to the "Volume Setting, Testing Sound. In the image it is pressed down. When I press it down I CAN hear music with this configuration. As long as I leave it like this I CAN hear music. But if I press "Okay" or the Check Mark at the bottom of the image to go back to the FM Tuner then I LOSE sound I can NOT hear it then! Sounds very weird to me. Hope this helps.

Asus A7N8X Deluxe rev. 1
Athlon XP2400+ Barton
Onkyo Reciever with Yamaha Bookshelf Speakers
I'm running the sound FROM my sound card TO my reciever via the Digital coaxal connection on the back of the board. For some reason my analog sound doesn't work, so I have to do everything ditially.

 

[Sappster]

Originally posted by: Sappster
PLEASE HELP ME!!!! Here's the deal. I just bought the WinFast TV2000 XP Deluxe card from Newegg this week. I hooked everything up and installed all the drivers, so everythings okay, right? WRONG!

I don't have the cable TV hooked up because I don't have TV in my room right now. (At home for summer). So I want to use the FM tuner. But there is NO Sound. HOWEVER, I can record a song on its radio and playback and I can hear it! Also, when I go into the settings if I do a volume testing then I can hear it, but when I choose ok and go back to the tuner NO sound!! PLEASE HELP! I'm so confused!

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Okay. Is there anyway to post an image in the forms? Or do you just have to provide the link? I guess it doesn't matter this time.
I have included this Image to show yall what I mean. The arrow is pointing to the "Volume Setting, Testing Sound. In the image it is pressed down. When I press it down I CAN hear music with this configuration. As long as I leave it like this I CAN hear music. But if I press "Okay" or the Check Mark at the bottom of the image to go back to the FM Tuner then I LOSE sound I can NOT hear it then! Sounds very weird to me. Hope this helps.

Asus A7N8X Deluxe rev. 1
Athlon XP2400+ Barton
Onkyo Reciever with Yamaha Bookshelf Speakers
I'm running the sound FROM my sound card TO my reciever via the Digital coaxal connection on the back of the board. For some reason my analog sound doesn't work, so I have to do everything ditially.

Nevermind about this post. EVERYTHING WAS FIXED. THANK YOU.

 

[multifacitedonyx]

Since this is such a long an rambling topic, I thought I would add to it!

I got the deluxe version a while back and have just noticed that when playing back a recorded video, the audio sucks. It is loud and full of static. Anyone have this problem? Any suggestions?

 

[mindless1]

Originally posted by: multifacitedonyx
I got the deluxe version a while back and have just noticed that when playing back a recorded video, the audio sucks. It is loud and full of static. Anyone have this problem? Any suggestions?

You are probably exceeding the max signal level your sound card can tolerate. In the app settings page, adjust the volume down... One of mine is set to "5".

 

[multifacitedonyx]

Originally posted by: mindless1
You are probably exceeding the max signal level your sound card can tolerate. In the app settings page, adjust the volume down... One of mine is set to "5".

5?!? I was set at "30" and thought that was kinda low. I turned it down a little more, and that helped alot. But even at lower settings it still sounds kinda hollow or like it is mono or something. Any other suggestions? And thanks for the reply.

 

[mindless1]

Originally posted by: multifacitedonyx

Originally posted by: mindless1
You are probably exceeding the max signal level your sound card can tolerate. In the app settings page, adjust the volume down... One of mine is set to "5".

5?!? I was set at "30" and thought that was kinda low. I turned it down a little more, and that helped alot. But even at lower settings it still sounds kinda hollow or like it is mono or something. Any other suggestions? And thanks for the reply.

"Lower settings" means you tried 4 or 5? If the audio in the recorded file seems too low then maybe the windows mixer line-out or wave playback volume is too low, rather than the Leaktek app volume being too low... only you can compare other files or same file on other systems.

If your soundcard supports spatial enhancements or other effects, that could also be a cause.

 

[multifacitedonyx]

Mindless1, thanks for the help. I had to play with the settings alittle and test a couple of files, but I got it working pretty well at a record level of "7". I got the card to transfer a lot of mini DV tape to DVD and was worried the audio was going to be degraded. Thanks again.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Wei2Cool
<blockquote>Quote
Originally posted by: ckportland
I will buy this in a heartbeat IF IT SUPPORTS WINDOWS MEDIA CENTER EDITION

Does it? Does anyone know?

WinXP Media Center Edition will not be sold retail. Where will you get your copy?[/quote]


There are lots of ways to legally get it; one is to join MSDN.

That said, unless the device does MPEG2 hardware encoding or is an ATI All In Wonder (I don't know how they got around the hardware encoding rule!) then MCE2004 won't support it.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: Wei2Cool
<blockquote>Quote
Originally posted by: ckportland
I will buy this in a heartbeat IF IT SUPPORTS WINDOWS MEDIA CENTER EDITION

Does it? Does anyone know?

WinXP Media Center Edition will not be sold retail. Where will you get your copy?

There are lots of ways to legally get it; one is to join MSDN.

That said, unless the device does MPEG2 hardware encoding or is an ATI All In Wonder (I don't know how they got around the hardware encoding rule!) then MCE2004 won't support it.[/quote]

It isnt supported in MCE. Don't waste your time.

 

[dafury]

Update: ONLY $40 NOW FOR DELUXE AT NEWEGG WITH FREE SHIPPING
and nah, I dont always type in caps.

 

[Sappster]

Does anyone know if it is possible to record a Television show WITH sound? When I try to record a TV show I can't watch it while recording because there is no sound! HOwever, there is sound once I go and playback the show. But I want to record and watch the show at the same time. But can not do this because there is no sound when recording.

 

[mindless1]

Sappster,
You either have the wrong audio devices selected in your Winfast application settings screen, or the windows/other audio mixer is either muted or volume insufficient. It is "supposed" to be playing sound while you're recording.

I don't know about your particular (audio) setup, but an example of setup on one box I have a card in (nForce1 "D" audio):

"Audio-Out Contol Line" = Line In
"Audio Recording Line" = Line In

 

[Sappster]

Originally posted by: mindless1
Sappster,
You either have the wrong audio devices selected in your Winfast application settings screen, or the windows/other audio mixer is either muted or volume insufficient. It is "supposed" to be playing sound while you're recording.

I don't know about your particular (audio) setup, but an example of setup on one box I have a card in (nForce1 "D" audio):

"Audio-Out Contol Line" = Line In
"Audio Recording Line" = Line In

It works if I just watch TV, but when I record it doesn't work. I'll look at my settings.

 

[DarkAmeba]

Is it worth the extra money for the onboard mpeg hardware decoding on the humppage cards??

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: DarkAmeba
Is it worth the extra money for the onboard mpeg hardware decoding on the humppage cards??

Oh yes! I have the $17 Asus/HP card, and it's *great* - no comparison with my old non-MPEG2 tuner.

 

[Muse]

I'm trying to do my very first video editing job on 2+ hours of minidv digital camcorder video. I've captured the video to my HD in 3 uncompressed files (AVI). I'm contemplating using the Ulead VideoStudio 6.0 SE that came with this card in an attempt to do some very basic editing before burning to DVD+Rs. I have Nero 6 Ultra and it's Nero VisionExpress 2.0, but I'm finding it pretty steep just to cut out some objectionable moments. So, I figure, why not try the Ulead VideoStudio? Is this feasible? Does this version contain a reasonable set of tools for video editing? I also have a Version 5 disk of Ulead VideoStudio, which says DV instead of SE. That came with my firewire card. Which of these would be better for my purpose? Thanks for any help on this.

 

[Muse]

A day or so ago my Winfast PVR stopped working. When I tried to open WFTV.exe, I got an exception error. So, today I uninstalled the application and all the drivers, downloaded the latest and installed - first the drivers, then the App. I did the channel scan like I did before, with antenna source/USA, auto fine-tune. However, my TV signal looks scrambled on all channels. Optimal Quality. There's a new thing called Channel Surf, and on that I can see OK images, but when I select one, it gets scrambled. Overlay Mode doesn't seem to matter. Sound seems OK. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Edit: Ooo, here's something funny. Choosing Normal Quality, I get a picture. Then Good Quality, and then I see that there are two Optimal Quality choices (say the same thing), in the right click context menu. The first works OK, the second scrambled. Is this just a bug???

Caveat: When I uninstalled the App, several recordings I'd made disappeared. I suggest you copy or move any recordings you want to save if you ever have to uninstall the application. Don't leave them in the Winfast Workarea. The directory will remain, but it will be empty after you uninstall.

I could be wrong, but I think the picture is definitely better. Could be the new drivers, I guess. These are version 5.13.1.243. For some reason, my Win2000 reports that the WDM Audio Capture Driver isn't installed. I reinstalled it and same thing.

Note: If you download version 5.13.1.277 of the drivers and install, you find that they are reported as version 5.13.1.243. I gather there is no difference.

 

[ChoppedBroccoli]

Originally posted by: Muse
A day or so ago my Winfast PVR stopped working. When I tried to open WFTV.exe, I got an exception error. So, today I uninstalled the application and all the drivers, downloaded the latest and installed - first the drivers, then the App. I did the channel scan like I did before, with antenna source/USA, auto fine-tune. However, my TV signal looks scrambled on all channels. Optimal Quality. There's a new thing called Channel Surf, and on that I can see OK images, but when I select one, it gets scrambled. Overlay Mode doesn't seem to matter. Sound seems OK. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Edit: Ooo, here's something funny. Choosing Normal Quality, I get a picture. Then Good Quality, and then I see that there are two Optimal Quality choices (say the same thing), in the right click context menu. The first works OK, the second scrambled. Is this just a bug???

Caveat: When I uninstalled the App, several recordings I'd made disappeared. I suggest you copy or move any recordings you want to save if you ever have to uninstall the application. Don't leave them in the Winfast Workarea. The directory will remain, but it will be empty after you uninstall.

I could be wrong, but I think the picture is definitely better. Could be the new drivers, I guess. These are version 5.13.1.243. For some reason, my Win2000 reports that the WDM Audio Capture Driver isn't installed. I reinstalled it and same thing.

Note: If you download version 5.13.1.277 of the drivers and install, you find that they are reported as version 5.13.1.243. I gather there is no difference.

Interesting...maybe leadtek released a drivers package that deals with more equipped cards (possibly the reason for the multiple 'optimal quality' modes...maybe one is for HD tv or something?).

Anyway, thanks for the heads up on the cleaning out of the Winfast Workarea on reinstalls.

Sounds like I may have to give these new drivers a try if they have better picture quality (although I have still been using the drivers released last March 2003 because they are rock stable on my computer).

Oh...and leadtek is super weird on the drivers number naming system. They have two formats (and use them both simultaneously) for numbering their driver releases and it gets extra confusing.

 

[mindless1]

Originally posted by: Muse
A day or so ago my Winfast PVR stopped working. When I tried to open WFTV.exe, I got an exception error. So, today I uninstalled the application and all the drivers, downloaded the latest and installed - first the drivers, then the App. I did the channel scan like I did before, with antenna source/USA, auto fine-tune. However, my TV signal looks scrambled on all channels. Optimal Quality. There's a new thing called Channel Surf, and on that I can see OK images, but when I select one, it gets scrambled. Overlay Mode doesn't seem to matter. Sound seems OK. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Edit: Ooo, here's something funny. Choosing Normal Quality, I get a picture. Then Good Quality, and then I see that there are two Optimal Quality choices (say the same thing), in the right click context menu. The first works OK, the second scrambled. Is this just a bug???

Caveat: When I uninstalled the App, several recordings I'd made disappeared. I suggest you copy or move any recordings you want to save if you ever have to uninstall the application. Don't leave them in the Winfast Workarea. The directory will remain, but it will be empty after you uninstall.

I could be wrong, but I think the picture is definitely better. Could be the new drivers, I guess. These are version 5.13.1.243. For some reason, my Win2000 reports that the WDM Audio Capture Driver isn't installed. I reinstalled it and same thing.

Note: If you download version 5.13.1.277 of the drivers and install, you find that they are reported as version 5.13.1.243. I gather there is no difference.

1st I'd focus on what happened to cause the PVR to stop working... Could be central to your problem. Many possibilities come to mind, like Viri, Spyware, (some type of) hardware instability, or Windows itself. "Maybe" the PVR app has a bug that corrupted a registry setting, but it seem less likely. If you'd changed video drivers, DirectX, chipset driver, or other windows OS changes that is certainly something to take a look at. It could be easiest to rule out hardware malfunction of the card itself by making a testbed clean OS install with only same (previously working) DirectX and Winfast driver/app. Given the nature of this hardware it might also be susceptible to surges coming in on coax video cable?

I did once put one of these cards into a system that scrambled the output and it was either a DirectX and/or video driver problem... seems I'd switched cards and somehow either the driver uninstall or new driver didn't update registry correctly. I don't even recall if i ever resolved the issue or how if I did, as now card is in different system. I probably did fix problem else I wouldn't have the vague recollection of the video card driver/registry but I'm afraid I've been dealing with too much info latey and these details have been lost due to mental buffer overflow. Also my problem might've been unrelated to yours except it's manifestation... this is windows we're dealing with. After uninstalling card app/drivers you might also delete all reg entries manually.

I have not tried most recent driver, had no reason to unless it resolves problem I saw on Win9x fm app crashing, but due to that i put my cards in 2K, XP boxes.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: mindless1

Originally posted by: Muse
A day or so ago my Winfast PVR stopped working. When I tried to open WFTV.exe, I got an exception error. So, today I uninstalled the application and all the drivers, downloaded the latest and installed - first the drivers, then the App. I did the channel scan like I did before, with antenna source/USA, auto fine-tune. However, my TV signal looks scrambled on all channels. Optimal Quality. There's a new thing called Channel Surf, and on that I can see OK images, but when I select one, it gets scrambled. Overlay Mode doesn't seem to matter. Sound seems OK. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Edit: Ooo, here's something funny. Choosing Normal Quality, I get a picture. Then Good Quality, and then I see that there are two Optimal Quality choices (say the same thing), in the right click context menu. The first works OK, the second scrambled. Is this just a bug???

Caveat: When I uninstalled the App, several recordings I'd made disappeared. I suggest you copy or move any recordings you want to save if you ever have to uninstall the application. Don't leave them in the Winfast Workarea. The directory will remain, but it will be empty after you uninstall.

I could be wrong, but I think the picture is definitely better. Could be the new drivers, I guess. These are version 5.13.1.243. For some reason, my Win2000 reports that the WDM Audio Capture Driver isn't installed. I reinstalled it and same thing.

Note: If you download version 5.13.1.277 of the drivers and install, you find that they are reported as version 5.13.1.243. I gather there is no difference.

1st I'd focus on what happened to cause the PVR to stop working... Could be central to your problem. Many possibilities come to mind, like Viri, Spyware, (some type of) hardware instability, or Windows itself. "Maybe" the PVR app has a bug that corrupted a registry setting, but it seem less likely. If you'd changed video drivers, DirectX, chipset driver, or other windows OS changes that is certainly something to take a look at. It could be easiest to rule out hardware malfunction of the card itself by making a testbed clean OS install with only same (previously working) DirectX and Winfast driver/app. Given the nature of this hardware it might also be susceptible to surges coming in on coax video cable?

I did once put one of these cards into a system that scrambled the output and it was either a DirectX and/or video driver problem... seems I'd switched cards and somehow either the driver uninstall or new driver didn't update registry correctly. I don't even recall if i ever resolved the issue or how if I did, as now card is in different system. I probably did fix problem else I wouldn't have the vague recollection of the video card driver/registry but I'm afraid I've been dealing with too much info latey and these details have been lost due to mental buffer overflow. Also my problem might've been unrelated to yours except it's manifestation... this is windows we're dealing with. After uninstalling card app/drivers you might also delete all reg entries manually.

I have not tried most recent driver, had no reason to unless it resolves problem I saw on Win9x fm app crashing, but due to that i put my cards in 2K, XP boxes.

I don't think I explained clearly enough. The version 5.13.1.243 drivers are what you get when you install 5.13.1.247, at least that's sure what I got. My impression is that these 5.13.1.243 drivers are anything but new. Before you bother to even think about updating your drivers, check to see if you are running 5.13.1.243 already. Good chance you are.

One thing that happened recently and I can't swear that I'd used the PVR program after doing so, is installing a package a few days ago that included Quicktime 5.0x and Realplayer xxx. This was an install of Ulead VideoStudio 6.0 SE and the 6.02 patch. It seems to me that something in that complex multi-application install might have screwed up the PVR. Both Quicktime and Realplayer seem to like nothing better than to take over your computer's multimedia capabilities. I tried to configure the installation to let them do the absolute minimum in terms of file associations, automatic this and that, etc., but I still wasn't able to stop Quicktime from making some assumptions I wish it hadn't. Maybe I shouldn't have let those install at all. Once in a while I do things that need them but I doubt that justifies installing them considering the grief they've given me.

The idea to check for spyware is a good one. Have to do that periodically, anyway. Been getting too much in the way of browser hiccups.

 

[TheKnife]

This is probably a silly question, but...

I am building a PVR/PowerPoint Presentation/Media Player box for my classroom (I teach history to high school students) and I thought I bought this card at Christmas time for a friend that was using Snapstream PVR software. Looking at their site, they don't seem to support Snapstream. Has anyone used snapstream with this card?

Thanks

 

[RossMAN]

Deluxe is in stock for $44

 

[ChoppedBroccoli]

Just a little info...

Decided to upgrade to the absolute latest drivers/application. Some nice new features, but unfortunately the 3rd party Girder program cannot be loaded while watching TV with the loaded software. For some reason IR codes aren't consistently received by the Leadtek PVR software.

Anyway, decided to downgrade back to the stable March 2003 release of the PVR software...BUT I ran into some major problems...the PVR software would crash everytime I tried to load it. I kept uninstalling, cleaning, and doing a clean install repeatedly, but to no avail (I was getting pretty scared). Finally I realized that I was using the latest drivers with my old stable release of the software....usually this works, but I guess recently there has been some major upgrades to the drivers or something. Anyway, I went back to the old drivers along with the old PVR release, and everything works wonderfully once again, including compatibility with Girder.


NOW FOR THE GOOD PART: For some reason I have never been able to get any sort of recording to work with my card other than MPEG-2 (which are very large files and hard to edit). Whenever I tried to capture to HuffyUV AVI uncompressed the recordings were choppy and messed up. I had it working for one month in Mar 2003, but somehow my settings got corrupted. In the process of reinstalling my software, I also got rid of a bunch of divx and unecessary codecs...in fact I pretty much wiped my computer clean of codecs. I then reinstalled ONLY the codecs I really need: mp3, ogg, xvid, divx, huffy, mpeg2. Now everything works beautifully once again...I can record to Huffy uncompressed and then edit (with my favorite, VirtualDub) to compress to divx. I love this card once again!!! In fact I got the whole Zel Miller crazy talk segment with Chris Matthews captured to a nice small divx file.






SUMMARY:

So here are the main points....

1) Don't use the latest drivers/software with Girder loaded at the same time, otherwise the PVR software will have a hard time responding to IR codes from the remote
2) If you like using old PVR software versions, make sure you don't use the latest drivers with your old software as that can cause the PVR program to crash on load. Use the drivers released in conjunction with the PVR software release.
3) If you are having odd recording problems: Wipe your computer clean of codecs and programs that install codecs. NOTE: usually downloading codec packs and just using the 'typical install' is not a good idea (as it installs conflicting stuff). Just install the minimum codecs that you need and use (preferrably individually without using a package). Install codecs only as you need them (on demand), not in packages. This avoids clutter/conflicts and makes troubleshooting easier.

 

[forcemac101]

It might be me, but I am having trouble installing the latest drivers...they are just a bunch of INF files...no installer came with them. I have tried folllowing their PDF file instructions, but everytime I point windows the directory with the updated drivers, it says it contains no information about your device....wtf?

 

[bigwill01]

Has anyone had trouble with XP not finding this tuner on the add hardware wizard? I've got the program and drivers installed, but it's telling me I don't have a video capture card. Tried it in 2 different PCI slots that both work with other devices.