Everything you need: unbiased reviews, product specs and great deals.
|
Hauppauge WinTV PVR250 (00980) Video CaptureThe WinTV-PVR brings live TV to your PC screen. With WinTV-PVRs 125-channel cable-ready TV receiver, you can watch TV in a resizable window...
Read More
The WinTV-PVR brings live TV to your PC screen. With WinTV-PVRs 125-channel cable-ready TV receiver, you can watch TV in a resizable window or full screen. WinTV-PVR puts TV watching under your control! Watch what you want, when you want! With WinTV-PVR you can pause TV when you want, create your own instant replay and even burn your TV shows onto CD-ROM or DVD!
Minimize
|
|
3 Reviews from Shopping.com
|
Great hardware weak software
| Author's Rating: |
|
Pros: Best 3rd party compatability Low CPU usage Outstanding picture Never a glitch or burp
Cons: Weak software More expensive than software based encoder
The Bottom Line:
Its a good package similar function to others but add software to make it better than all the rest
he PVR series of hardware is the best of breed it seems. They certainly have the most 3rd party support. I bought the PVR250 because it is actually the older model so it gives me more software choices than the 150 or 500 models. I ran the original software for a few days and although it can record and even pause live tv it is just too clunky to be used as a consumer VCR product. The software may be fine if you want to tape or watch tv on your PC while using it. Thats the magic of a hardware based encoder. It takes very little CPU power to record or watch video. Thats what makes this card special. The software included in the box is what makes the hardware seem average. If you buy this card you should at least download the trial versions of beyondTV and SageTV. They time out after a few weeks so just do 1 at a time to see how well this card can work. Almost every PVR application made can use this card including free ones. I tried GB-PVR and it was a little buggy but its free and getting better. I am also looking into trying the Linux based PVR build, mythtv in my spare time. (If I ever have any) I think there are 15 or so software titles that can use this hardware. Just find your price point and usability level.
Back to all reviews
