From poor documentation and confusing software to incompatibility with popular PCs, our testers found installing and using the products an ordeal. The wooden spoon goes to the Hauppauge VideoMagic Pro. Although it's an impressive piece of hardware, it's hard to install and temperamental in use. In general, our reviewers found that there seemed to be an inversely proportional relationship between ease of use and video quality.
Stability seems always to be bought at the price of compatiblity.
While it's easy to set up the Matrox Rainbox Runner and Iomega Buz Box, the former will only work with Matrox graphics cards, and the latter's SCSI interface needs a system with support for bridge chips and PCI 2.1. However, whichever card you choose, you'll spend a lot of time talking to technical support. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of ZDNet is prohibited. ZDNet and the ZDNet logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.