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Problem with Leadtek WinFast DTV2000 H Digital TV tuner purchased from PACSTAR on Bridge Street, Epping.

I bought this card a couple of months ago and it has been nothing but trouble. From day one, the card has been terrible. The sound drops out randomly while watching television. This is accompanied by the picture displaying in jerky 3 second intervals, as can be seen in the video.

The other major problem with the card is that it will not play and record at the same time! As soon as you try and record anything, the same problem occurs, and although sound comes through on the recording, it is infuriating that you cannot actually watch TV while it’s recording.

Now, apparently, the card itself is not faulty. I took it back to PACSTAR in Epping and they swapped for another card. This card has **exactly** the same problem. I went back to PACSTAR in Epping again. They told me that they believed that because the card had been swapped, it was not faulty and the problem was with the user! “It’s probably just a setting that needs to be changed. Check your settings”, the man in the shop said. I told them that I had already done this and I wanted my money back. They refused to do this, insisting that the product was not faulty. They said, we can have a technician look at it, and since it’s just a problem with your settings, we will have to charge you. If the card is faulty, we won’t charge you. I didn’t want to do this so took the system away again.

I sent various emails to Leadtek on the 10th, 11th and 12th of August as follows:
“When watching TV, the sound sometimes drops out. This always happens when I try to use the record feature. Although there is sound on the recording, I cannot actually watch the show live because the sounds disappear completely and the picture becomes jerky. At other times, the sound drops out for no apparent reason even when I’m not recording. This is extremely annoying.”

I never got any reply to any of my messages, which went to supports@leadtek.com and contact@leadtek.com.tw

In desperation, after this problem driving me crazy, I gave up and took my computer into PACSTAR in Epping. I figured, if their technician could fix the problem, I would be prepared to pay their service fee, even though it seemed like pretty poor customer service.

This is where things became really farcical. Their technician looked at the system on Monday, and they told me, “yes, sometimes the sound drops out, but this is just because we have very bad reception here, we have no external antenna”. I asked, “yes, but did you test the recording function? No sound comes through the system while you’re trying to watch and record at the same time.”

“Oh no, we haven’t tested this function,” they told me. So I left it there another day and when I came to pick it up in the store, I was told that they had not found a problem with this function at all. I could hardly believe it! The actual technician was not there but I spoke to the lady on the phone who told me that the technician had found no problems with the sound while recording! She suggested that maybe the reception at my house was the root cause of the problem. Or maybe it was a software conflict because I have a lot of programs on my computer. “Just reinstall windows”, she said, “then install the TV tuner again”. Then it will work. I tried to argue my case, but she just kept insisting they had found no problem at all with the card. At the same time arguing that if I had problems, it was either my reception or I needed to reinstall windows. I found both of these arguments absurd. I’ve just moved house and I’m still having the problem, so it’s obviously nothing to do with the reception – both places have external antennas.

They then charged me $40 for the service!!!!! As soon as I got the computer home, I connected it and had exactly the same problem again. I am now totally frustrated. The manufacturer is apparently impossible to contact. I’ve paid for the product and I’ve now paid $40 for a service that did absolutely nothing and apparently couldn’t even find a fault!!!! AND IT STILL DOESN’T WORK!!!!!

System information
Windows XP Home Edition
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor
Gigabyte K8nf-9 Motherboard
6600GT 256MB PCI-E VGA Card
1 GB DDR 400

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Technorati Tags: DTV2000, Leadtek, pacstar, Problem, WinFast