🚀 go-pugleaf

Dear Madam, Sir

Recently I have purchased a diamond speedstar A70 specifically for it's
claimed
ability to have a television output and it's support of mpeg2.

However I have found that in both cases the card does not function as is

specified.
First the speedstar A70 does not support tv-out under Windows 95 as is
acknowledged
in the ss95208.txt quote...
'TV-Out and Gamma Display Properties are currently not available under
Windows 95.'
This of course is quite unacceptable since the product is marketed as
though it should.

The argument that it does run under Windows 98 is in this case 'moot'
since Windows 98
doesn't come for free, certainly not with the card, and thus adds to the

cost of the functionality
desired by the potential buyer.

Installation of the card, regarding tv-out, is vague, badly documented
and flunky.
After finding out that the card did not function under windows 95, I had

to figure it
out empirically because at the time I was doing the installation I had
no Internet
access (should this be a system requirement?), I installed Windows 98
and still had
no tv-out.

After fidgeting with my video and tv cables I discovered that the video
signal was blanking
the tv screen and was 'pressing' the tv-out signal of the card away.
This could be easily remedied. What I however noticed in the process
that when this
occurred the tv-out tab of the drivers options simply disapeared....I'm
still baffled by this,
how can the card detect the signal....and why should it?

So after two days of wrestling with the card I finally had a picture on
my tv.....but it wasn't
quite what I expected.
First of, what's wrong with the underscan option 800 x 600? It doesn't
cover the complete
screen i.e. it leaves a border. This 'sucks' because watching video with

a border isn't my
idea of crispy new entertainment.
Furthermore my previous system an old Olivetti P75 had a trident card
that gave a complete
screen, even under dos, without any problems.

Are these issues which will be resolved or am I doing something
'dreadfully' wrong here....?

I wish I could say well that's it but alas it ain't.
Another poorly documented 'bundled extra' was the Zoran SoftDVD player
reason
numbero duo why I had bought the A70.

Let's make this one simple....it doesn't work...it does...nada.
You start it and it hangs that's it no more no less.
Re-installed Direct X, set to no auto detect of dvd on start up etc
etc....
But it simply doesn't respond.

What's the beef.. is it version 1.1?
Is there a update?
Will your company be so friendly to send the A70 customers an update? ;)

All in all I'm a wee bit disappointed by the whole thing I presumed that

Diamond
was a company that took some care of the quality of their products to
find out that this
is not quite the case.

Furthermore I would like to add that I have cross psted this message to
your customer
support and have mailed this message to several related news groups so
that current
owners of the card and people planning to buy the card are aware of what

kind of problems
may occur.

This since I found no mention of the issues here discussed, with
exception of the above
mentioned ss95208.txt, on your companies site.