Hauppauge WINTV-PVR 250 (PCI) Remote MPG2 Hardware Decoder

Just wanted a basic capture for TV and home vid. N ...

Strengths: predictable quality over all compressions, easily installed, good basic s/w bundle

Weaknesses: pvr has fewer functions than ATI and Hauppauge editor is easier than Ulead but won't let you save results.

Summary: Just wanted a basic capture for TV and home vid. Now I'm knee-deep in SVCD's. About a 2sec delay between source and 'puter makes it easy to edit "on the fly." Maybe I missed something but I can only get stereo from analog input and not from cable, big deal? not really.

So far, any quality problems have been a result of my messing around.

Ran well on win98 and made the transition to XP(clean install). Using AMD1700XP on DFI board with 1gig RAM,GeForce 3agp and trinitron monitor. The only 2 PCI cards I have are the S/B and the WinTV so I have no real potential conflicts. SVCD results look better on regular TV than on monitor. Just put a 2400XP together and stuck the ATI AiW 8500DV in it. Can't decide which to put in front room. Either way, I'm quite satisfied. Capturing stills is about the same as the old Snappy only in more resolutions. Just happy with the purchase and wanted to share....

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I tried several competitive products for video cap ...

Strengths: High video quality for recording and highly reliable hardware for Windows XP.

Weaknesses: Software needs to be more robust and a short manual for the software should be included.

Summary: I tried several competitive products for video capture - Dazzle, Adaptec, Pinnacle, and Belkin Videobus II (USB). Even though the Belkin Videobus was the easiest to set up, the WinTV PVR 250 was a very close second and has the best video quality I've seen! I'm using the device mostly for analog camcorder capture and VCD/DVD burning. The software is a little challenging to use (go to www.shspvr.com... for help), but the results are hard to match!!! A very reliable product. I'm looking forward to actually using the TV portion of the package soon, but I'm having too much fun converting my old analog camcorder tapes to digital!

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This card produces excellent video captures - the ...

Strengths: Creates excellent quality MPEG recordings, for the price one of the best in its class.

Weaknesses: Software is a little awkward to use -does not remember defaults.

Summary: 2004-05-20 08:05:16 This card produces excellent video captures - the best I've seen of the 3 different products I've used. The screen snapshot utility is a weakness - I'd like to see better frame by frame editing capabilities. Also, the software doesn't remember my S-Video input as default so I have to adjust for it every time.

Note: In my former posting I blamed this card for system crashes, but I've since learned that every graphic device in my system including Windows Media Player was crashing the system in the same manner, until I replaced the graphics card with a 258MB ASUS high-end replacement.

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Works OK & seems CPU efficient but I don't like th ...

Strengths: Uses 30-40% CPU during capture - onboard MPEG1 & 2 encoding.

Weaknesses: Capture from HI8 and VHS tapes has a band of interference on the bottom of each frame. Composite adapter worthless.

Summary: Works OK & seems CPU efficient but I don't like the band of interference on the bottom when capturing from tape. I exchanged the first card for another & it did the same thing. Support wasn't helpful and blamed my recorders for having tracking errors (I tried 2 HI8 camcorders and 1 VHS deck as input and all 3 had the same tracking error? Baloney!). Also, both composite/S-Video adapters I tried only passed a black & white picture so they are worthless. You need a real S-VIDEO connection directly from the VCR. I did find a program, TMPGEnc.exe, that allowed me to clip off the band of interference but it's another step I don't feel that I should have to do to copy my home videos. I haven't really used the TV recording as I was only interested in video tape capture. Version 1 of the WIN-TV 2000 software has a number of bugs and frequently requires shutting down the application and restarting it to change options. The newer beta version is better in that regard but still isn't anything wonderful.

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• Just an FYI, a bar at the bottom is common with any analog captur...

At first you will enjoy the high image quality. I ...

Strengths: It had the best image quality comparing with other TV tuner cards. It has the best recording image quality due to the hardware mpeg encoder.

Weaknesses: It is not stable. It freezes frequently. I have tried three different boards. They all have the same problem. It is fair to say that the product quality was not well controlled.

Summary: At first you will enjoy the high image quality.

If you want to run it as a TIVO, you will find that the application may malfunction from time to time.

Technical support has asked me to upgrade to the latest patch. That does not solve my problem.

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