Image quality was good, with little staggering effect or dropped frames. The 15 fps capture worked well, but when we tried cranking it to 30 fps at 320x220, we dropped about half of the video altogether. At lower resolutions, it captured just fine, which makes the card a likely candidate for Web-style video. The still caps were of acceptable quality, good color, fair sharpness.

The lack of a SVHS jack is a real disappointment in an otherwise good card. Much as we like watching b-grade entertainment on our desktop while we work, there is more to life than capturing Scully. After all, there are games. How are we Dreamcast and PlayStation players (let alone DVD users) supposed to plug those console units in at the superior image quality SVHS allows? The software is fairly flexible for the price ($79.99). But, again, the manual described features, like sharpness control, that we couldn't find in the shipping version of the software.

The FlyVideo unit is less expensive than some similar PCI tuners, so bargain hunters should take a look. But if you are hunting skin, however, the card has one disturbing kludge - that damned LifeView software that doesn't give you a shortcut key for grabbing and naming sequential frames. To grab an image from the video window, you have to right click on the image to call up a menu, then name the grab file. It is nigh impossible to snatch a fleeting flash of skin this way. You work yourself up to the peak frame of maximum skin exposure ("MSE" to the faithful) and then you have to call up a menu and a file naming dialogue box? Way to break a voyeur's concentration, dude! Don't the guys at this company know what we really use these devices for?