2. Installing And Using The ZTTV Card

Installation was fairly quick. You just have to insert the software CD to install the drivers and InterVideo's WinDVR (Digital Video Recorder) software. There is a normal install and a "special" installation for people who have compatibility problems. There is one quirky issue that may or may not be a problem for some. At no point in the installation are you prompted to insert the card.

Zurotech bundles InterVideo's WinDVR3 software which let's you view, record and playback video. Program setup and use was easy and quick. Going into the setup menu, the user can select from either the composite or antenna/cable sources. If the antenna/cable source is selected, the user can then do a channel scan to look for "live" channels.

The WinDVR software in action. This is a screen capture, not a photo of the laptop's display.

While Zurotech included a small antenna with our retail kit, we suggest that you either use a cable connection or buy your own antenna. We tested out the signal quality at a Starbucks Coffee shop on Melrose Blvd. in Hollywood, California. Even with the television towers looming above us, we still got a grainy picture.

The story was different when we plugged a cable television connection into the Zurotech card. The resulting video was good enough for prolonged viewing.

WinDVR3 can record the input signal into MPEG2 files and the user can select from three quality settings (Good, Better, Best) or make their own. Since the card can take composite inputs from a VCR, users can digitize their old and crumbling VCR tapes. In fact, we used the Zurotech card to quickly convert a recently-recorded local news broadcast into an MPEG file.

There is one quirky thing about recording video with the WinDVR3 software. With other video recording programs, the red record button will start and pause the recording. This is not the case with WinDVR. Clicking on the record button the second time does not pause the recording. To stop the video, the user must click on the stop button and then type in a Program Name to save the captured video to a file.

Unlike other PCMCIA cards, the Zurotech card does not display an eject or stop icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen. If the television software is not running, you can basically just rip the card out. Zurotech does warn that the computer might crash if you take the card out while watching television. We verified this during our testing and add that your computer probably will crash if you abruptly eject the card while the WinDVR program is running.