So about a month ago, my wife's computer with the AIW Radeon 7500 flips out, and Windows spews everywhere. I do a clean reinstall of the OS, and things are fine... until I go to record video, whereupon I end up with screwy video speeds, and trashed audio.
I've updated drivers for the card, the motherboard, replaced the sound card, updated DirectX, tried different versions of ATI's software, tried different recording software, fiddled with BIOS settings, and too many other things worth mentioning. At the end of it all, the same card in essentially the same setup that worked just fine until Windows flipped out is worthless for recording, and I'm done screwing with it.
The solution? :macos:
Back on topic and off-rant, I've been working on an iMac-replacing beige DT 266 (which is clocked quite muchly; if the CPU goes south, it'll just get upgraded) with an 80GB hard drive, DVD-CD burner "combo" style drive and 384 MB of RAM. I'm thinking of throwing a "Wings" personality card in it and using it to record instead.
Question(s) being: anyone have experience with this card that can tell me what I will and won't be able to do with it? What format(s) does it capture in? What resolutions and bitrates can be achieved? Isn't there a DVD decoder in these things? Do they work significantly better if paired with a faster CPU? (I'll upgrade, just gimme a reason ...) 
I've been Googling around for info, but was hoping someone here would have some insight. I can get the Wings for pretty cheap, and I'm realistic enough to realize it probably won't match the AIW, but your input would be appreciated.
Best regards,
Macinjosh
I'm assuming your talking about the AV personality card, right? (I haven't herd the term wings used with that card) Anyways capturing is tricky with those cards. As far as I can tell adding lots of RAM and caputring with a 3rd party app (I like BTV pro from bensoftware.com) at a resolution less than the card's 640x480 max helps alot. Theres a audio sync problem with those cards but what I posted helped when captuing on my system.
Apple's app doesn't compress much when capturing but BTV has a ton of options, just about any codec on the system. If you want to get better compression while captuing then yes a better processor will help a lot.
Since it seems like you have most of the required hardware hook it up to a video input and play with settings until you find something that works for you.
I'm not sure about the DVD decoder, I think a few did and most didn't. If it doesn't I think the flashed radeon 7000 cards have an onboard DVD decoder which will work with Apple's DVD player