Problems recording TV with WinFast 2000 XP

[jdbolick]

Apologies if this has been asked recently, but I didn't see mention of this particular problem in any of the threads on the Leadtek card (ones that prompted me to buy it in the first place). Anyway, my problem is that while I can watch TV quite well in real-time, any recordings come out extremely choppy. I'm not particularly surprised given my ancient system, but I wondered if someone had experienced this and had advice on how I might solve it.

Win XP
1.35 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
Radeon 9800 Pro
256 MB of PC2100 (my other sticked burned out and I have been loathe to replace it since I don't want to pay for more 2100 when I expect to do a wholesale upgrade before too long).


Will biting the bullet and getting more memory solve this problem, is it a settings issue, or is it just something I'll have to deal with unless I get Tivo? I'll continue to tinker, but I'd like to get this worked out before the first NFL game. Also, does anyone who has used this card have suggestions on the best settings? 4.7 GB for a two-hour recording seems a bit excessive, but I'd like to record at the highest quality.

 

[farmercal]

I have the same card and have recorded many, many programs using the recording feature of the card and the recordings are an exact copy of what I watched using the card. I can even watch the recorded media using windows media player with the same crisp clear picture. I record with set at 640 X 480 and have never had a problem with any playback. I have an AMD 2400+ overclocked to 2150 MHz, 1 GB of Corsair RAM, and an ATI Radeon 8500 LE video card if that helps.

 

[jdbolick]

Thanks for the info. I'm thinking that this is probably a memory issue. I did some searching and found a post on another site where someone complained of similar problems. Since I do want to do some quality recording pretty soon I'm now looking at addressing my memory situation, although it's really going to suck if I spend that money and it's another part of my decrepit computer causing the problems. The card itself seems to be great and I'm impressed by the features, I just want to get decent recordings since that's the reason I got it in the first place.

Edit:
Oh, and what do you do about the large size of files? I have two medium sized HDs and a DVD burner so that's not a huge problem for me once I get quality recordings, but it still seems a little excessive. I'm puzzled as to why a recording of a two-hour movie should be so much larger than if you just buy it (I imagine it has to do with encoding and such, I just didn't expect it to be massively larger).

 

[farmercal]

I have a 120 GB hard drive and another 180 GB SCSI drive I have yet to install, so hard drive space is not an issue for me. As far as the recordings go I remember someone talking about using a program called DVD Shrink before they make a DVD so perhaps that program reduces the recording size down to a manageable size before burning a DVD. I haven't made a DVD yet so I'm not an expert in that area at this time. Good Luck.