Hauppauge 1178 WinTV-HVR-1600 Internal Hybrid TV Tuner/Video Recorder by HAUPPAUGE
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List Price: Our Price: $69.99 You Save: $30.00 (30%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Hauppauge 1178 WinTV-HVR-1600 Internal Hybrid TV Tuner/Video Recorder
Digital camera Review: Excellent Vista/MCE solution.
Summary: 4 Stars
I run Vista Ultimate on a home-built PC with an AMD X2 4600+, 2GB RAM, and a 7600 GS GeForce video card. I connect to my XBOX 360 on a 100MB network and use the XBOX's media center extender functions to watch television. I receive my TV signal over the air using a CM 4228 roof mounted antenna in the SF Bay Area.
This card, with the newest drivers, is QAM capable, but only if you use the packaged TV software, and it might also be QAM compatible with other TV software suites, but not Vista Media Center.
The setup using Media Center could not be easier. Install, install drivers, and add your channels. The picture is fantastic, it changes channels quickly, and does not interfere with anything else in my computer. I can't recomment this card more, and I will be buying another so I can have a dual tuner set up, allowing me to watch one channel while recording another.
Digital camera Review: Excellent tuner for Media Center
Summary: 5 Stars
Everything was easy to install and it works great. We use it with our Xbox 360 to record TV shows. It is an excellent buy!Digital camera Review: Fast tuning... great signal sensitivity, robust & stable
Summary: 5 Stars
I build Media Center PCs as a hobby for the past 2 years and I've played with a fair share of tuners from Avermedia, Divico, Hauppauge, EMuzed, ATI, nVidia, etc. As I rebuilt my Sony XL-1 CE-EPC, I wanted to swap our the OEM card and an old ATI HDTV Wonder card I put in with something more stable than the OEM analog + HDTV wonder that also fit the XL1 chassis. After using the HVR-1600 for the past 6 months, I'm pleased to report that ATSC tuning/channel change is quite fast, it has good ATSC signal sensitivity and most importantly, stable while running Windows Vista Ultimate Media Center app. I do get a glitch on occasion switching between analog and digital channels with a MCE 'video error' message. I can't target the problem but I will say the OEM analog card + the HDTV Wonder card also exhibited similar issues when switching between A & D channels.
Last but not least, image quality, I find the analog channel has good brightness and decent color saturation (most analog tuner cards have problems with color balance anyways). The digital tuner as expected didn't degrade the ATSC signal and does a great job with brightness, contrast and color saturation as well.
In short, a good balance of price, quality and stability. I even bought it for a friend and he notices improvments over his previous solution.
Digital camera Review: Good product, good value, software is clunky
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this to add tv tuner capabilities to my desktop workstation. It works quite well for watching and pausing live tv. The software for viewing, planning, and storing automated recordings is quite clunky and awkward to use. My suggestion: Try http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10053173-1.html?tag=TOCcarouselArea.0 when it is available. It is packaged with a nearly identical Hauppauge tuner card, or you can use your own card and just buy the software.Digital camera Review: Great
Summary: 5 Stars
I added this as an additional tuner to the analog one that came with my computer. Works great and works perfectly with Windows Vista and with Media Center. Make sure you have a garphics card the one on my motherboard was not enough.