Reviews for Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500MCE Kit w/2 Tuner w/ Mce Remote Control - White BoxMPN: MODEL253 
By anonymous - Dec 18, 2006
Serious issuesStrengths: Works with MCE Weakness: Weak tuner signal; known issues with failing Samsung tuners. Apparantly, there are many issues with this card using a Samsung tuner. Many of the units have either two Samsung tuners or a Samsung and Philips tuner. 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
Reply by member: deanhatescoffee
Apr 3, 2007 I read that Hauppauge admitted that many of the cards in their December 2006 shipment were faulty, and that they were openly filling RMAs to replace the faulty cards. At least they stand by their product.
By member:
treefrog07
- Nov 7, 2006
No More Set-top Cable Box (and rental fees), No need...Strengths: 2-tuners, easy-to-install, excellent support page at Hauppauge website, working remote. Weakness: None so far. Performs as advertised. Tuner card and remote worked natively with WinMCE05 for live and recording TV. GB-PVR required a little tweaking (using "config") to make the remote work; it did well on live and recording. I couldn't persuade the remote to work with Hauppauge's WinTV2000, but live and recording TV both worked. WinTV2000 and GB-PVR are freeware (and linked on the Hauppauge support page, as are updated drivers for the card). Recorded TV files from all 3 programs can be edited (deleting commercials) and burned on hard drive or DVD with Nero 6 (I know it's old, but it works well.) 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top
By anonymous - Oct 3, 2006
Best Dual AnalogStrengths: I have had the opportunity as a media center software developer to test out various cards. This card takes the cake for either dual or single tuners. Weakness: Nothing other than a PCI vs. PCI-X interface. This card performs wonderfully. It splits the TV input on the card making a cable or antenna splitter unnecessary. The decoding takes place directly on the card, and despite what I've read in another review, this card has no jitters as do other cards. As long as your system is well configured (don't cheap out on a media center), you can use eaily 2 analog and 2 digital. I actually have a tweak that allows for more tuners, and I am currently using two of these cards together for a total of 4 analog tuners and 2 digital. 100% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful? Top 
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Good TV card for MCE
Strengths: 2 TV tuners, FM tuner, kit comes with remote, generally good quality image / recordings, easy installation, expansion card for second A/V connection
Weakness: Locks up occasionally (may be due to MCE), some interference evident in image (may be coax connection), takes a second or so to change channels
I've been using the PVR-500 (Kit) in a Windows XP MCE-based computer for around 2 months now. Overall, I've been fairly pleased with the performance. On most channels, the image looks pretty good, if a bit dull. It does take a second or so to change the channel, but I suspect that has to do with the "buffering" it does (records to the hard drive all the time so you can rewind and pause live TV). Being able to watch one channel while recording another is also pretty sweet, as is recording two channels simultaneously. Note that when I watch a channel that is being purposely recorded, the displayed live video is a bit jittery, though the recording itself is perfectly fine. Not sure what the deal is there, but I've gotten used to it.
The remote works good, although it does seem a bit limited to me. However, the remote looks to be similar to most other MCE remotes I've seen. I haven't tried the FM tuner.
Issues I've seen are probably not attributed to the card itself (maybe the drivers) but rather the fault of MCE. Mainly, I have problems with the card locking up periodically, i.e. image freezing, though the system in general does remain responsive. This seems to happen most often when the system comes out of sleep mode, or when I try to rewind the video. I intend on performing a fresh install of MCE in hopes of resolving this. I'll update this review if I get it to work correctly.
My other problem is reception interference, though I suspect that could be the coax cable I'm using. I might also try moving the card to the other free PCI slot in case there is interference from the power supply or something. Either way, I haven't really heard of this as being an issue from anyone else (and I did a lot of research before purchasing the card).
In the end, I'm happy with the PVR-500. I suppose it's a bit expensive at around $160, but you do get a lot of functionality in that card.
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