Home > Consumer Reviews > Hauppauge WinTV HVR 1100/Hybrid analogue and digital PCI card

I'll start with a rundown of the product contents/features:
1xPCI Board with:
Freeview Tuner, Analogue Tuner, FM Radio Tuner (2x Aerial inputs - FM and TV)
1xComposite Input, 1xS-Video input, 1xAudio in jack (3.5mm stereo)
Comes with IR remote, IR reciever and FM aerial

It uses Hauppauge's WinTV2000 software which allows you to pause Live TV and record to a file (MPEG2). You also get Now & Next info instead of an EPG. TV can be shown in a window or full screen. The software can run in the background while you surf or work on office documents. (Recording should not be done whilst other applications are running)

As well as that I connected my Sky Digibox via the composite input and 3.5mm Audio jack and was surprised by the picture and audio quality. I can now also record from the Digibox directly to a file on my PC which can be used to make a DVD at a later date.

I have been looking for something to connect my digibox to so i could watch it on my computer for some time. When i found this it was like TV overload. Installation was easy, Freeview channel scan is automatic and takes a couple of minutes. Your composite input is assigned a number like your other channels so you can flick easily between freeview, analogue and sky digibox. The FM Radio is tuned easily because you just type in the frequency and it finds it. Simple.

All in all a great product, as the title says... Worth every penny.

I have been using this card for just over a week now, and have the following comments to offer.

I have it in a fairly high spec machine (3.2ghz, 1GB ram, fast hard disks). I am connected to a fairly old roof mounted aerial via a very long (25m) rf lead running through the house. I live in central london, with a decent digital signal, and strong analogue, albeit with some ghosting due to buildings.

On installing the card (with latest drivers off the website), I immediately hit slight problems with errors in the installation, although the errors didn't actually seem to affect the operation of the program.

I have found the quality of the reception of digital channels to be excellent, with a nice picture and good audio. However, quality of analogue reception is frankly poor. Compared with the very old low end Pinnacle card which it replaced, I would say that the treatment of the analogue signal left a picture of about 30% the quality I had before on the same aerial setup.
I found that connecting a cheap booster box from Argos increased the number of digital signals I could recieve significantly, but did not improve the analogue signal.

The software supplied with the card is frankly buggy, and more than a little ugly. I have had numerous crashes with it, and experienced many silly glitches. (Aproximately 30% of the uses i make of it result in a crash of some sort). It feels more like beta software. I recommend instead using software such as Cyberlink's PowerCinema, which is better designed.

In summary then: this card provides excellent digital reception, even on a supposedly non-digital outdoor aerial (no need to spend £120 on an upgrade to that). This is at the expense of poor analogue reception and mediocre supplied software.

I am currently running a pc with vista Home Premium, I had a previous bad experience with a Dazzle USB D-TV stick...dont buy it, it doesn't like vista, and took over 3 hours to clear it out the registry.(it does not uninstall!!!)
I bought the Hauppauge card as there are a number of good reviews online, the advice that I picked up was this....
connect up the device, turn on the computer.
DO NOT instal any of Hauppauge software at this stage, windows has the drivers preinstalled.
Thats it...go into media centre, set up the tv.
The remote that it comes with will work most of the media centre functions, open up the files in the installation cd, and find the file IR32.exe this will install the software for the remote to work media centre.
It was as easy as that, I couldn't recoment this product enough.

...although the box stated HVR1100, the chip on the card read HVR1110...I believe that this is the updated model.

As of the end of May 2007, the XP drivers have been sorted... I have over 50 channels available and I'm not even in a supported digital area (peak district)... good picture, although a little blurred at 1920x1200... but I expected that. everything works as it should. You will need a digital enabled aerial though.

I have had several other Win-TV cards in the past 10 years or so, and to be honest they have performed well. Before I ordered thsi card I did a lot of research and the HVR-1100 had received some very good reviews and it appeared to do all I needed, so I ordered it.

The delivery arrived fine, box was marked HVR-1100, all the bits were in the box and I'd already downloaded the latest drivers from the web-site for this card. Installed the card in a PCI slot, and noticed that it looked different than I had expected it to look, as it was a triangular board, not oblong.

Booted up, Windows XP [Home SP2] detected the card and asked for the drivers, I pointed it at the latest ones I'd already downloaded, and the card was installed. I then installed WinTV2000 and all the other bits.

Launched WinTV2000 and it asked if I wanted it to scan for channels, I replied yes, and off it went.....analogue channels found 9, digital channels found 0. Which is odd as we have a high-gain digital aerial and 2 other devices in the house that find almost 60 digital channels [one is a set-top box, the other is a 32" TFT TV with built-in Freeview].

I contacted technical support at Hauppauge and they suggested I try the latest Beta drivers and software as this is a known problem with this card, at this point I realised that this was an HVR-1110 I had been sent, not a HVR-1100 [which doesn't suffer from this problem].

Dowloaded an tried the latest beta drivers and software. scanned again, same results. Several calls later with technical support it is clear that this card [HVR-1110] has a major problem with Digital using the current available [and beta] drivers. Further suggestions involved me uninstalling various software and sending them my PC, as the problem 'may' be due to the power supply [NOT].

So, to wrap-up, I have returned the card to the seller as 'not fit for purpose' and also 'not as described' as well as 'faulty'. The real HVR-1100 card [oblong] is fine, the new HVR-1100 [triangular and really a HVR-1110] should be avoided at all costs at this time.

Hopefully this will stop anyone else having to go through what I have in the last week, If you want a good alternative, I'd suggest the HVR-1300 as Hauppauge haven't yet re-engineered that card.