🚀 go-pugleaf

	Since I got some email asking questions about the Win/TV card and I
had the opportunity of using the card for a whole week, I will try to answer
some of the questions I received.

	For those of you who missed the thread previously, Win/TV is a card
that allows a standard NTSC (or PAL) signal to be played in a window under
Microsoft Windows.  The card itself is a full-length 16-bit card that will
accept a signal from cable, a VCR (including SVHS), LaserDisc (?), or an
antenna (sic).  There is an octopus cable that accepts various sound inputs
and has two wires that can connect to a right and left speaker.  I took my
external speakers that I had connect to my SoundBlaster and plugged those in.
I didn't try to hook it up directly to my SB or stereo yet.

	When installing the card under windows (with the Win/TV software) you
MUST set-up windows in standard 640x480 VGA mode first, then install the Win/TV
software.  After the installation, you can reset Windows to any higher 
resolution.  One thing the manual said was that you can go up to 1024x768x256,
but it must be INTERLACED.  I tried it non-interlaced (which my video card
and monitor supports), but the picture was "snowy".  I decided to just run
it at 800x600x256.  This worked great.

	When you double-click on the Win/TV icon a small (1/4 of screen) window
a TV window pops up.  The window can be resize to a very small window to a full
screen window.  If you iconify the window, the Win/TV icon on the bottom of the
screen STILL SHOWS THE TV SIGNAL!!!  The picture itself (in a 1/2 of screen
window) seems crisper than a television sometimes, but if the window is too
small then you can see staircasing on the picture.  This isn't too bad though.

	You have control over how much red,green,blue (RGB) you want in the 
picture as well as the contrast, brightness, hue, etc.  This is all accomplished
through control windows.  You can also select the country the signal is 
from (US,Japan,...).  There is an option that automatically resizes the window
to a "standard" video dimension.  So if you make a large distorted window, the
software will reshape the window so the images on the screen look normal.

	The card does have a tuner so if your cable allows it you can click up
and down the channels from the Win/TV menu.  Warner Cable doesn't allow me to
do this, so I have to use the remote control to change the channel. :-(
There is also volume control arrows and mute button next to the channel select.

	A great feature of the card is the ability to freeze a frame of the
TV picture and save it as a BMP,TIFF, or a couple other formats.  The frozen
images are usually not great, but they are better than I expected. 

	I think the cost of the card is around $350, but I'm not sure.  

	If you don't use Windows, then this card won't be convenient for you.

	As far as bad points go, here they are:

	o  The manual is a little sparse (~13 8.5"x11" sheets).  But there 
	   isn't too much to explain, a lot of stuff is intuitive.

	o  I had to move the card away from my video card or hard drive card
	   because I had terrible interference.  Once I moved it, the picture
	   was fine.

	o  It can only be run under Windows.

	o  It cannot run 1024x768x256 NON-INTERLACED

	o  Sometimes I had to play around with the colors to get a better 
	   looking picture.

 	o  If the TV window is behind another Windows window sometimes pixels
	   of the TV image flash through (usually through the icons only).  It's
	   not too bad, usually only a couple pixels.
	   

	On the whole I really like the card.  The picture is good and the
software is easy to use.  

	Some questions I still have on the Win/TV card are:

	1. Can I run Win/TV under OS/2 2.0 ?

	2. Will I run into problems running this under Windows NT? (I assume not)

	3. What is the current version and is there a new one planned any time
	   soon?  Any chance of the price dropping?

  	4. Are there any other cards out there that does the same thing?


Rob
-- 
:: Robert J Knaack                    :: "You call ME crazy? You wouldn't  :: 
:: knaack@csd4.csd.uwm.edu            ::  know crazy if Charles Manson was :: 
:: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee::  sitting on your front porch eat- ::
::                                    ::  ing Fruit Loops" - Mike Muir     ::