Too much hassle
Written: Oct 13 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Video Recording feature, Pause feature, crisp picture, nice software package
Cons: Poor technical info, difficult to install drivers
The Bottom Line: Not worth the hefty price tag due to difficulty in getting it to work properly and lack of detailed technical support documents on website.
|
|
|
| datwater's Full Review: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 (980) TV/Video Input |
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 booted up WinXP Pro. It detected the card, and asked for drivers. I pointed it to the CD, and it installed the drivers - which are not digitally signed or WHQL certified - even though it claims WinXP on the packaging. I then installed all the extra software; the TV viewer, the Mpeg editors, etc. When I went to run the TV program, however, it crashed immediately upon opening it. I went to Hauppauge's site, and downloaded the latest drivers and applications for it, and reinstalled, and rebooted - the TV would open, scan for channels (and correctly choose which channels I had, and didn't have) and then sit there with a black screen and no sound. I should note that all this time, my PC has a noticeably slower performance - and I see 60% + CPU Utilization in task manager. Also, when these applications hang, you can kill them in task manager - but they remain open - a reboot is all that would work, folks. So anyhow, I follow all the recommendations on the hauppauge site, including disconnecting myself from the lan, running a program to clear any other drivers I've installed, and installing thigns in a specific sequence with reboots between each install. Same results. Frustrated, I try putting the card in a different PCI slot. Same results. Cursing now, for paying $150 for a card and feeling like it should be a much easier process to get it working, I move it over to my other PC. I have the same results, and follow pretty much the same sequence of events. I find sites on the web with 3rd party applications, 3rd party drivers, and complaints from other users of this card. After weeding through posts on many sites (2+ hours since I brought the card home now), I finally got the darned thing to work.
Once it's working, it's great. The picture is crisp and clear; the audio is, as well. While there is a small delay when changing channels or opening features such as pause or record, it's nothing unbearable. I played with recording in a bunch of different formats (Mpeg1, mpeg2, svcd, dvd), and found that 10 second clips ranged from around 1mb to around 7mb. The quality of recorded clips often exceeds the quality of what you see "on the fly". The pauses noted earlier are not apparent on the recorded clips.
Overall, I'd tend to steer someone away from this product if they're using Windows XP. I can't honestly say how it installs with other versions of Windows, but for WinXP, it's a bear.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
datwater
|
|
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.