SnowBurnsMyEyes

Hi guys, I'm new here, and I just bought a used AIW 9600 Pro to replace my TV Wonder 650 (which has a FUBAR AGC). I've done some reading, and it seems that most people regard the T200 drivers as hopelessly broken. It also seems that the NSP drivers are considered inferior to the SP drivers, and some people have gone to great lengths to swap out NSP drivers in favor of SP drivers (Come on ATI.. Little more work on the AIW series please.).

What I do not understand is...why? What are the actual differences between the driver types? What issues does each one have? On this forum and others, it seems like every discussion on the issue starts out well beyond the point of explaining the issue, as if it goes without saying and everyone on Earth but me already knows what the problem is. Instead, the discussions I see seem to focus only on either raging against the ATI gods or determining how to clean out drivers and shoehorn in a specific type. Here's what I know:

• I've read about lockups, but I'm not sure whether they apply to T200 or NSP drivers, and I don't know whether they apply to all software (I use Virtualdub, not MMC) or all uses (I'm capturing VHS through S-Video, so I don't need TV channels).
• I read that after Catalyst 6.20, the T200 drivers are "mandatory."
• The T200 drivers don't always install correctly for everyone, leading to yellow question marks (or exclamation points?) in device manager. I get this problem with recent drivers, e.g. 10.2, but I don't have this problem with the T200's in Catalyst 6.11.
• I also know that either the NSP or T200 (which?) eliminated the need for plugging an audio jack into your sound card. Apparently this is a bad thing, and I've read randomly about lockups and such using the AIW directly as an audio capture device...but even with the T200 drivers with Catalyst 6.11, I am able to output the audio from the AIW to my Audigy 2 with an 1/8" minijack and use the Audigy 2 to capture. What gives?
• The T200 drivers don't seem to have levels controls in Virtualdub, and the sharpness slider in the proc amp is gone too. NSP and SP drivers have levels controls and sharpness sliders, but the overlay display seems to be broken with them (at least with the drivers I've tried, which are 6.20 NSP and the 4.somethings I think from my installation CD).
• I noticed that somewhere along the line, the capture window changed. The drivers from my installation CD capture an active window of 52.15us or so (704 DVD pixels, which are stretched into the 720 pixel-wide capture format), and both the 6.11 T200 and 6.20 NSP drivers capture an active window of 53.33us (a full 720 DVD pixels). When did this happen?

So, blabbing aside: What issues do the NSP drivers have? What issues do the T200 drivers have? Why are the NSP and SP drivers preferable over T200, and why are SP considered the best?