Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I don't write many reviews, but I thought I'd put in a good word for this product. This is an excellent tuner, especially for the price. I doubt you'll find a better tuner capable of HD at this price range. It handled a SD signal very well. While watching SD television, I could have several other programs running at the same time without a problem. The card handled a SD well enough that the CPU was free to do other things. At one point, just to put it to a test, I had a DVD playing on my television, a youtube video playing in my internet browser, and the tv playing. They all ran fine.
HD was a slightly different story, but that's to be expected. As long as I was only watching the television, everything was fine, but I could forget doing a lot of multitasking. I could run other programs at the same time, but only if they weren't too demanding. My computer's over a year old though, and was hardly a high end supercomputer when I bought it (AMD 3400+ processor). I haven't tested it out myself, but if you've got a newer PC with a dual core, you should see much better performance.
A couple of warnings though. I would NOT get this as a substitute for a true HD television. Even on a very good monitor, the picture just isn't quite up to par with a decent HDTV. The same is true when it comes to recording. It does the job, but its a little crude compared to a DVR like, say, TiVo. There are other little shortcomings too, like a half second delay between the signal and the picture showing up on your screen. Not a problem for television, but it makes playing games nearly impossible. Don't plan on hooking up your console to this thing.
Also, plan on doing a little tweaking when you install it. This is not a plug and play device. I'm not an A/V expert, but I do have some experience installing PC hardware, and it took me a couple of hours to get the drivers and the settings straight. Plan on going to the company's website for drivers and troubleshooting guides. It got me through the install without too much aggravation.
These shortcomings are things you'll experience with nearly any TV tuner, unless you plan on spending a small fortune. They aren't due to flaws in the product. The technology just has some limitations at this point.
Overall, an excellent PC TV tuner. Even on a computer that was far from high end, it ran very well.
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Hauppauge 1178 WinTV-HVR-1600 Internal Hybrid TV Tuner/Video RecorderThe Hauppauge 1178 WinTV-HVR-1600 includes dual TV tuners to let you watch both digital and analog television on your PC, in a window or full screen. With PVR software and built-in hardware for MPEG-2 encoding, you can also record television onto your computer for viewing later without slowing down your computer.
Watch High-definition Digital TV on Your Computer With dual format TV tuners, the WinTV-HVR-1600 lets you watch ATSC digital TV as well as QAM digital TV and analog cable TV. ATSC digital TV, which typically requires an antenna for reception, is the over-the-air HDTV standard for North America. ATSC broadcasts range in resolution from standard definition up to the high definition 1080i format. (To check the ATSC digital transmissions in your area, input your zip code at titantv.com.)
The WinTV-HVR-1600 also lets you watch and record QAM channels, which are unencrypted digital channels broadcast by your local cable operator. If you don't have access to digital television channels yet, you can also watch regular analog cable television. And with the included remote control, you can control your cable TV or satellite set top box.
In addition to high-definition video, the card also features a dbx-TV stereo decoder for great TV sound. The card has Composite/S-Video and audio inputs that allow for connecting VCRs or cable/satellite set top boxes.
Your Own Personal Digital Video Recorder! With the included software, you can easily record TV shows to your hard disk using MPEG-2. Several recording options are available depending on your playback needs; higher quality video requires more disk space. Generally, 5 gigabytes of disk space is used per hour of ATCS digital TV recordings.. Thanks to the built-in hardware MPEG-2 encoder, your PC continues to run at full speed even while recording.
With the WinTV-Scheduler software, easily schedule the recordings of your favorite television shows daily, weekly, or just once. You can then play back the recordings at your leisure, burn them onto CD or DVD for playback on another computer or your television, or with video editing software (not included), you can edit the shows. This is great for saving favorite movie clips, or of your favorite teams dramatic last-second win or your favorite player's grand slam.
The Hauppauge 1178 WinTV-HVR-1600 plugs into a PCI slot and is compatible with Windows Vista, XP with Service Pack 2, and Windows XP Media Center Edition. With XP-MCE and Vista, you can add the WinTV-HVR-1600 as either the primary or secondary TV tuner. The Microsoft Media Center application supports up to two TV tuners so you can watch on channel while recording another.
What's in the Box WinTV-HVR-1600 PCI card, IR remote control receiver, IR Blaster (remote control), CD-ROM with WinTV software.
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