A great TV Alternative for Laptop Users!
Written: Jun 12 '02 (Updated Jun 12 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Small, Portable, Good for Laptops, Good Quality
Cons: Price, Occasional Minor Picture Distortion
The Bottom Line: I recommend the Hauppauge WinTV USB! It has good picture quality, and great stability. Turn your PC into a TV! :)
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| magitek's Full Review: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-USB (881) Video Capture |
I just recently purchased my Hauppauge WinTV USB capture device from an Office Max store for $80.00.
I had previously used the TV Wonder PCI card by ATI, and was very displeased with its performance. I decided though that I would give PC TV capture another try.
I'm glad I did!
The actual WinTV USB device is a small rectangle. It's about an inch thick, and 5 inches tall by two inches wide. It's a nice transparent looking green color, so it looks somewhat nice. It's very light too, for portability. It has a Coaxial TV Input, an Audio Input, an Audio Output, as well as an S-Video Input. There is an adapter to Input Composite Video into the S-Video slot, also. That way you can hook up a VCR, camcorder, etc.
The device connects to the PC via USB. In order to have audio work also, you have to connect a cable (supplied) from the output on the WinTV USB device, to the line in/mic input on the PC. On my laptop PC, the cable doesn't get in the way.
I installed via Windows XP, and the software and driver installation went completely and totally flawless. It was VERY easy. The WinTV USB supplied software was very easy to set up, also. It automatically scanned my cable for available channels, and it's easy to switch between channels also.
The Software allows you to preview up to 16 channels at once, as well as capture still images, and MPEG video from your input. It isn't EXTREMELY feature ridden, but it's very good for watching TV in full screen, or a mini window.
I haven't experienced any instability problems. I can watch TV and run other applications, with no problems. My laptop has a 1GHz CPU and 256MB SDRam. No problems at all, whatsoever. Stability is a major plus!
So, why WinTV USB? My purpose behind the purchase was an alternative to a TV for my college dorm room. I can hook cable up to my WinTV USB, and voila, my Laptop has become a 15 inch TV!
The TV quality is nice. It isn't superior digital quality, although I've NOT tried it on any type of digital cable signal. I assume digital cable would look a lot better! As long as you're not within a couple feet of the PC, the TV picture quality looks completely and totally fine. The one flaw I've noticed is that on *some* channels, the top half centimeter of my screen is like white snow. Barely noticeable, yet notieable. If you have a way to adjust your monitor display UP at all, you could eliminate that issue completely.
All in all, I'm happy with my purchase. Have a laptop, or even just a desktop PC? Turn it into a TV, with the Hauppauge WinTV USB! :D It's a cool toy! :)
Thanks for reading, back to watching my Laptop TV! :D.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
magitek
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Member: Jared Bachman
Location: Neenah, WI, USA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 3 members
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