John: No problem on the rant, other than you're statements are completely false. Please don't take this as a personal attack, but you don't know what you're talking about. It wasn't clear from your post, but if you're using a non-NT OS (i.e. Win98, ME), then there is no point in even going any further. However, to address some of your other points ...

1. "If you're using Storm cards, then I'm frankly amazed that any software, including Premiere, works properly on your system."

Actually, everything works BEAUTIFULLY on my system. I run all my machines (save my laptops) 24/7/365 and I have yet to have ONE BSOD in Win2K ... EVER. Do apps crash? sure, occasionally, and even then it's always only the poorly-written ones.

2. "The suppliers won't take them back, they've no second hand value and Canopus have never answered any of my e-mails."

The fact that the suppliers won't take them back is no surprise since they're used, and that is on an individual supplier-basis, some will some won't, that's not Canopus's fault. First of all, email would be my LAST RESORT. I have emailed them and they always got back to me. BUT WHY NOT JUST CALL THEM?? They have FREE tech support and they're very good.

3. "... they're redundant anyway, why buy a capture card that's no faster than a standard firewire and uses a proprietary compression so that every frame captured has to be re-rendered?"

Wow, I don't EVEN know where to start here. But I'll try. First of all, it's many, many, many, many, many (you get the idea) times faster than a standard firewire card. It does everything in REAL-TIME, no rendering at all. I have no idea what you're talking about.

It is also the only card on the market (that I know of) that is future-proof. That is, it is fully scalable ... it only gets faster as computer hardware technology gets faster. It is not limited by the hardware of the card itself.

Finally, ALL realtime cards use a proprietary compression. Canopus happens to be recognized as one of the best. Secondly, I have NO CLUE what you're talking about when you say it needs to be re-rendered. This is simply not true, unless you're importing footage that was not captured using the Canopus DV-codec, and even then it takes no time at all to reformat clips. It think you need to RTFM before you give up on it, as you are missing out on one of the best realtime cards ever made.

Oh, and you said "they've no second hand value" ... yeah right, go list your boards on eBay or the Canopus forum ... see how long they last. They are in HIGH demand. Again, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Sorry, didn't mean to turn this into a Canopus discussion forum, but just needed to set the record straight. We now return you back to your regularly scheduled program.

-Tim