Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 (980) TV/Video Input

Pros: Hardware works well, popular card means more support by outside vendors
Cons: The software is atrocious. If you need to timeshift, you'll need third party software.

This is the second PVR application I've used with my computer. The first was the Creative Labs Digital VCR, which is about 2 years older. Since it's easier(but less fun), I'll address the hardware first. One of the reasons I selected this product is ...

Pros: Hardware compression is wonderful. Capture and viewing software are primitive, but at least they're reliable.
Cons: Bundled editing software was useless. Occasional hiccups in live TV.

I've spent the last 2 weeks looking for the best TV/capture card and software. This was the best of the cards I tried, for 2 main reasons: 1. Hardware compression lets you record high quality MPEGs (720x480 resolution, near DVD quality) with ...

Pros: MPEG2 Encoder, S-Video input, Remote Control.
Cons: Expensive, Bad for watching live TV, pain to install, unresponsive support.

I've had a few different TV cards over the years - and I decided it was time to "move up a notch" and get something better. The PVR-250 seemed to have the right balance of features and performance - plus - the price "looked like it was better than the ...

Pros: Video Recording feature, Pause feature, crisp picture, nice software package
Cons: Poor technical info, difficult to install drivers

I made the choice of the $150 (retail) WinTV PVR250 over the $40 (retail) TV Wonder, simply because the WinTV PVR250 has hardware mpeg encoding. Now I wonder if it was worth the extra money. I brought it home, and installed it in one of my PC's, and...

Pros: Great picture, VCR feature is COOL, easy set-up (for me anyway)...
Cons: Software 'hangs' at times but reducing hardware acceleration a bit fixes it

Did you ever wonder what would happen if you could transport a Pentium-4 computer with no manual bac ...

Pros: Ability to watch TV on your computer, convert Analog video to digital.
Cons: Takes up an additional slot in my computer, no stereo input

According to TV-Cards.com this PCI card is superior to the USB version of WIN TV. Because the U ...

Pros: Low cost PVR
Cons: Not too easy to setup and use

Unfortunately the first one of these I tried was defective – no picture or sound. The 2nd one however works fairly well for the price and was fairly easy to install. It’s takes a while to get the hang of using it though – the user interface...

Pros: -Widely Supported -Hardware Encoding
Cons: -can't think of any other then it's more expensive than software based encoding card

I picked up this card because I wanted hardware encoding since the HTPC machine I am building are left over from my upgrade where it was only a P3 800mhz. People with newer CPUs in the 2ghz range can probably get away with software based capture card. But if you want the CPU utilization rate to be in the 0-3% range, you'll have to get a hardware based encoding card which offloads all the CPU power it needs to capture the video to the card.

I have read through few other reviews where couple other people were complaining are blaming the card simply because of difficult installation. But don't know if it's their bad luck or system or what, but mine install went very straight forward. If you've looked around the HTPC community, this card is used the most people in the range of over 60% if I remembered correctly. Plus, it's guaranteed to work with BeyondTV and Sage TV which are 2 most popular PVR software. There are many cards out there that also work with the 2 softwares, but if you are unsure, or new to computers, you can't go wrong with this card.

Pros: It does what it should do. Has never crashed on me.
Cons: Installation and debugging is not for novices. Supplied software and tech support could be better.

Displays live TV and sound with clarity. Accurately captures VHS and S-VHS input signals. Converts both successfully to MPEG2 format without losing sync sound - even up to 2 hours.

There are capture cards alone (without tuners) that cannot do that. With this Hauppauge card (and 3rd party software) I have created DVD copies of off air broadcasts and older VHS tapes (home movies). Quality of DVD is virtually "lossless" in appearance and sound.

It took much research and a minor nightmare with an AVerMedia card to lead me to this device.

My computer is a new HP off the shelf with a Pentium 4 @ 3.0 GHz, 512 K RAM.

Pros: Does what it's supposed to.
Cons: Software stinks; get SageTV!

This hardware is great; it does what it's supposed to. Single video source input. However, the software that comes with it leaves a lot to be desired. For pure functionality, SageTV is the way to go (www.freytechnologies.com), and the two work exceedingly well together. Can't go wrong with the combo!