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Hauppauge WinTV Nova T 500/Dual digital PCI TV tuner card
See it at Amazon.co.uk for £72.99Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
Finally - a DVB card that can handle poor TV signals
(5 out of 5) by M. Byatt on Mar 25, 2007 (UK)I've had a media center setup for a year or so (initially under MCE2005 and now vista), but whereas my TV has been able to decode Freeview with no problems, most TV tuner cards for PCs are so sensitive that without a perfect signal the media center loses reception resulting in a blue screen.
this is the third DVB tuner I've tried (both PCI and USB) and it works brilliantly - perfect, faultless reception and not a blue screen in sight (having a dual TV card rather than two singles also seems to help - possibly requiring less signal)?
Highly recommended, and with MS Vista it's brilliant if you want an integrated system for TV, Photos, Video and Music.
this is the third DVB tuner I've tried (both PCI and USB) and it works brilliantly - perfect, faultless reception and not a blue screen in sight (having a dual TV card rather than two singles also seems to help - possibly requiring less signal)?
Highly recommended, and with MS Vista it's brilliant if you want an integrated system for TV, Photos, Video and Music.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Fantastic Product
(5 out of 5) by C. Taylour on Jan 25, 2007 (Cornwall)I built my own media centre. All was going well except the TV tuner. I had bought the Compro t-750 and it is unbeliveably useless. I sent it back and bought the this one from Hauppauge and it works likes a dream, wish I had bought this first, would have had more hair left!!
I use it with MCE 2005 and only use the supplied drivers. Recording is easy and clear, even when recording on both channels and watching back a recording, whilst being recorded does not cause it to worry. Does not like poor signals, booster fixed this. Otherwise, this is the card for me, Great!!
I use it with MCE 2005 and only use the supplied drivers. Recording is easy and clear, even when recording on both channels and watching back a recording, whilst being recorded does not cause it to worry. Does not like poor signals, booster fixed this. Otherwise, this is the card for me, Great!!
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
Fantastic picture quality - software could be better....
(5 out of 5) by M. Calvert on Oct 26, 2006 (Cumbria, UK)Finally thought I`d post my first ever review on Amazon, after using this
card for a few weeks now.
Installation is a breeze, but the WinTV2000 software instructions are poor
when it comes to being able to record one tuner whilst watching another.
This is actually done by setting the Scheduler to `Background recording`
for the tuner to record, and then just starting up a seperate session of
WinTV2000 to watch the programme you want to watch.
As far as converting to DVD goes, I`ve just about messed with every
combination of post-capture software there is, and I can say that the
easiest and quickest method of getting the captured .mpg file to DVD is
to throw it at a programme called `VideoReDo`, and tell it to do a
`Quickstream Fix`, which fixes the file to be a proper DVD-Mpeg Stream.
Then you can re-load it into VideoRedo and trim the start and finish
points, and re-save the file. This file can then be thrown at Nero to
be converted to a DVD. Simple process, quick to do, and gets a final DVD
with no lip-sync issues, which I found I was getting with lots of the
other post-capture processing software methods.
Hope this helps someone, as it really is a good bit of hardware, but it
can be frustrating due to the poor instructions from Hauppauge.
Following the routine above will give you stunning DVD quality results.
card for a few weeks now.
Installation is a breeze, but the WinTV2000 software instructions are poor
when it comes to being able to record one tuner whilst watching another.
This is actually done by setting the Scheduler to `Background recording`
for the tuner to record, and then just starting up a seperate session of
WinTV2000 to watch the programme you want to watch.
As far as converting to DVD goes, I`ve just about messed with every
combination of post-capture software there is, and I can say that the
easiest and quickest method of getting the captured .mpg file to DVD is
to throw it at a programme called `VideoReDo`, and tell it to do a
`Quickstream Fix`, which fixes the file to be a proper DVD-Mpeg Stream.
Then you can re-load it into VideoRedo and trim the start and finish
points, and re-save the file. This file can then be thrown at Nero to
be converted to a DVD. Simple process, quick to do, and gets a final DVD
with no lip-sync issues, which I found I was getting with lots of the
other post-capture processing software methods.
Hope this helps someone, as it really is a good bit of hardware, but it
can be frustrating due to the poor instructions from Hauppauge.
Following the routine above will give you stunning DVD quality results.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
A great card for Linux PVRs
(4 out of 5) by B. Lancaster on Jan 19, 2008 (Reading)I have two of these cards (making four tuners in total) on my MythTV machine. Having built a few MythTV-based media centres now, this is my far the best card I've tried, and is now very well supported under linux using the video4linux drivers (using the open source firmware out there; just search around for dvb-usb-dib0700-1.10.fw). The linux firmware can also enable the "poor quality signal booster" that's built on to the card.
The card tunes to channels notably faster than many of the other tuners I've tried too.
However, it's not without its faults:
As stated previously, the remote control is a bit rubbish (feels very cheap, and has a limited angle/range, more tricky to get working under Linux), so the USB MS MCE Remote is definitely a must-buy to go with this (very well supported on Linux).
In addition, it'd have been nice to see regular RF terrestrial supported and FM too, but with the DVB Radio channels on Freeview this may not be a gripe for you.
I've also found that the ariel socket on the back is a little feeble, the older of my cards has worked itself slightly loose and I'm a tad concerned it may disconnect from the board before too long.
Taking all of the above in to consideration, this is still far and above the best card for a Linux based PVR and very worthy of a 4/5 rating.
The card tunes to channels notably faster than many of the other tuners I've tried too.
However, it's not without its faults:
As stated previously, the remote control is a bit rubbish (feels very cheap, and has a limited angle/range, more tricky to get working under Linux), so the USB MS MCE Remote is definitely a must-buy to go with this (very well supported on Linux).
In addition, it'd have been nice to see regular RF terrestrial supported and FM too, but with the DVB Radio channels on Freeview this may not be a gripe for you.
I've also found that the ariel socket on the back is a little feeble, the older of my cards has worked itself slightly loose and I'm a tad concerned it may disconnect from the board before too long.
Taking all of the above in to consideration, this is still far and above the best card for a Linux based PVR and very worthy of a 4/5 rating.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent card, Windows software poor, works fine in Linux
(3 out of 5) by wyliecoyoteuk on Oct 3, 2008 (uk)I purchased this card because I wanted to build my own Media centre, and it was on the MythTV compatibility list.
It works perfectly with MytThV on Linux, just needed a bit of fiddling to get the Low Noise Amplifiers switched on. The remote works fine too.
I use MythBuntu on my HTPC, a surprisingly good distro,easy to use and set up.
With the latest version of MythTV , I can even record multiple channels from one multiplex on each tuner. At the moment, I have it set up for four channels max per tuner.
It works perfectly with MytThV on Linux, just needed a bit of fiddling to get the Low Noise Amplifiers switched on. The remote works fine too.
I use MythBuntu on my HTPC, a surprisingly good distro,easy to use and set up.
With the latest version of MythTV , I can even record multiple channels from one multiplex on each tuner. At the moment, I have it set up for four channels max per tuner.