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(More customer reviews)I purchased this card after reading another review on Amazon.com which stated that this is a good card for Linux. Well, it is a great card for Linux, but once it arrived in the mail, I was somewhat disappointed to notice a few things I didn't expect with the card.
First, this card has no TV coaxial in or out. The picture here on Amazon is somewhat deceiving as you only get a side view of the card, which gives us the illusion that this thing is loaded with all kinds of input connectors. Well, it's not. The four connectors you see in the picture are all video RCA jacks. Although this card DOES come equipped with an S-Video input (not visible in the picture), you only get four RCA jacks in addition to it, and nothing else.
Second, this card may be a pain to install. I had to bend the piece of metal that SHOULD have fit into my computer case like all my other PCI devices, but because it was too short, it did not. This was OK because the piece of metal was easy to bend using a cheap pair of pliers. I had to be a little creative in breaking the piece of metal that normally sits at the edge of a PCI slot with no card present, and fit the card's bent piece of metal over it with the ports exposed in order to keep the card in the case firmly; it took about 15 minutes in all, but I'm assuming that most people would not have the patience to work out a poor man's solution like this.
Finally, there is little or no documentation on this card inside the box. My card came with the card and a CD that contains drivers for Windows. The piece of paper included was merely an instruction manual on how to install the drivers in Windows. Luckily, my distribution of Linux had a preloaded capture card driver for this device and automatically recognised the card when I booted the machine. I fired up TVtime and was blown away by the quality of the picture after thinking that I had wasted my money on such a poorly manufactured card.
Yes, this card has a good picture quality. However, there is no audio input or output, and the card comes with no cables. You will have to purchase any extra cables you need, and if you want to use this card for playing video games or watching TV, you will definitely need to purchase an extra cable so you can connect your sound directly to the input on your sound card. This won't be a problem if you just want to play some video games; you will only be looking at about $3-5 for the right audio connector at your nearest electronics store. For watching TV, though, you may need to purchase a VCR or some device allowing you to connect a coaxial cable to it, and then output the video signal to this card and the audio to your soundcard via RCA cables. Could be much more trouble than it's worth.
So, unless you're fairly proficient with computers and electronics, and unless you really need a capture card for Linux, then I would skip this card and look into a better alternative. It just isn't worth the frustration of purchasing extra equipment to make it do everything you would expect. For me, however, this card works just fine. It's unfortunate that it wouldn't fit into my computer without resorting to crude installation procedures.
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