Today, I got a brand new TV tuner card. My previous card, the Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Expert refused to work in Vista if I used anything but its crappy software. No thanks. Plus since it did not have a digital (ATSC) tuner, the card would be crap in a matter of a year or two when all TV broadcasts will switch over to digital. Since no one has a review on this product yet, let me do a review on the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800.
White box, no frills…just how I like it! Not even instructions!
I really can’t get a good shot of the back of the card, because the flash reflects too much, so I’ll just tell you the layout on the back. If you have the motherboard on a flat surface like a table, and you’re putting the card in that way from top to bottom the connections are: FM In, TV In, Antenna In, S-Video In, Left Audio In, Right Audio In.
Also note that this card is a PCIx1 card, and is NOT LOW-PROFILE! This is perfect, as I have an unused PCIx1 slot right above my video card, which would probably never be used. Time to fill it in! I’ll be back, as I’m going to reboot and put this card in.
Windows wasn’t able to find drivers online — surprise, surprise. I went to the Hauppauge website, and I came across this page. Very important for anyone that has Vista.
As I was cleaning up the area, I found this. Looks like I missed it:
It’s an S-video to composite connector. Good bonus with the card.
As for TV quality, I’m still messing with the different applications. I’ve only tried the card out with Windows Media Center in Vista. For the record, I’m using Vista 64bit, and this card works fine with it. No worries here.
I tried the Hauppauge software. No thanks. The only thing that it’s good for right now is picking up QAM channels, which Comcast doesn’t offer.
Using Windows Media Center for TV produces about 2-3 seconds of delay from live TV, due to the fact that it’s using the card’s built-in MPEG2 hardware encoder (or the fact that Windows Media Center has a built-in timeshifting feature that you can’t turn off…). I have yet to test the composite/S-video input. It’s a shame that DScaler doesn’t work yet, since I have 64bit *sigh* although people are working on 64bit drivers. Best of luck to the DScaler team.
I have one of these cards in my desktop. The delay is horrible. It’s impossible for me to play any video games off my Wii or GameCube. Too bad… Other than that it works OK.
Chirs94:
It actually depends on what software you’re using. DScaler can bypass the software encoding and get the video feed directly from the card. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that DScaler doesn’t seem to want to play nice with this card.