Home > Consumer Reviews > Hauppauge WinTV USB/Analogue USB TV Tuner box

As it's a USB device, installation of the Hauppage WinTV-USB was hassle-free. In addition to plugging it into one of the PC's USB ports, the only other necessary connections are to the TV aerial and the line input socket on the sound card. The image quality was poor compared to the PCI adapters, much poorer than on a standard TV receiver. This is inevitable due to the data compression employed on USB adapters.

Specifically, the picture wasn't especially sharp and the refresh rate was less than broadcast TV's 25 frames per second (actually 50Hz interlaced). This shows up in particular when watching people talk close-up, and when fast-moving objects are present on the screen. Flickering also occurred on the top line of the picture.

The software consists of the usual applications for watching TV, capturing video clips and accessing Teletext.

I got this (and returned it)a few weeks ago. Watching a TV program on a PC using this is akin to watching a TV with a sock over your head in a thunderstorm. It is not a card. It plugs into a USB port much like a USB pen and the TV aerial is plugged into the unit. Also, my device came with unsigned drivers, which, according to the manual, may cause your system to become unstable or unusable. Installed in 3 minutes, unplugged in 2, and system restored in 15. Don't buy this!!!

I got this Tv-tuner Win-TV usb2 as a gift and it never worked properly... The sound is fine but the image is very low quality and crassing all the time! Even with no filter enabled it stills moves to slow... I tried several drivers even older version but the problem still remains. I don't see that the problem is my coputer since it is perfectly seted up with latest drivers...CPU: P4 3.0Ghz HT, Ram: 1Gb Dual channel (2*400mhz), Graphics: Hercules 9800XT. I am afraid that all USB TV-tuners perform too badly against the PCI ones, with the worst of all Win-TV usb2.

We have had one of these Hauppauge WinTV USB units for nearly two years, and it has been used successfully on a laptop(W98SE, Pentium 366) and a couple of desktops (W98 Athlon 800, WinXP Pentium 2.53G)

What confuses us is the number of reviews referring to the unit as a "Card" since it isn't a card. It's a tiny remote USB-powered TV tuner box, and ours works well.

It was quirky to use the first time (this is years ago, remember) & we needed to download the updates from the website, but it worked OK after doing this. The VTPlus Teletext software is written in Germany, and the manual is typically opaque as a result (Help tells you everything except what to do & why you should do it), but the software works well once one realises that there are obscure undocumented teutonic 'features' like not using a space in the channel name ( is OK, but confuses VTPlus).

WinTV 2000 is now a well featured piece of software that only suffers from having a diseased 'skin' appearance and tiny concealed buttons.

WinTV 32 (alternate interface) worked fine too, with fewer features and a more normal appearance.

Video capture worked first time (WinTV 2000 is best for this), it's not high res, but VHS is only around 300 blurry lines, and what do you want for the money?

The PDF & HTML help files on the Hauppauge.com & ...co.uk web sites are pretty detailed and we found them useful when setting up the beast and using the updated software.

We fancy buying a second one, or something similar for permanent use, so we're now looking at the PCI cards - PVR maybe, and Freeview is very tempting.

I read the reviews and decieded to buy the tv card as i was moving to uni and didnt have any room for a tv set. Unfortunaly i have a problem with it, may be my computer but i dont know.

Firstly the tv program itself. Its great,however every so often it freeze's and i end up having to restart the computer. This at times can get annoying.

Also i've had small (but not unfixable) problems with the driver where i have had to reinstall it again.

I've also ahd problems via connecting my video and playstation to the tv card. I found a lead to connect my video, but i only get a picture and no sound. The playstation prob, it only show's certain games without crashing the computer.