Rating: 
Summary: Great TV Tuner Card
Review: I have had the PVR-250 on my computer (2.7GhZ, 1GB RAM) for about 3 months and have recorded numerous products on my hard drive that, after editing, I have burned to DVD. Very good quality DVD's with very little in the way of dropped frames (it does happen from time to time). I plan to try to hook up a VCR to the card and capture some old VCR footage to see how it compares to my current capture card. The TV quality is very good and the TV Scheduler is very reliable. The TV Titan website is tied to the scheduler, so you just have to go to the website, click on the program name and the scheduler sets itself up for you. Very nice. I don't like that the TV doesn't close out once recording is done, so I have to make sure my speakers are off if I record something in the middle of the night. All in all, this is a great product.
Rating: 
Summary: PVR 250; Good recording, so-so playback and bad live TV
Review: I purchased the PVR-250 to edit home videos, record TV shows and watch TV.I've found the PVR to be good for recording home videos, okay for recording TV and insufficient for watching TV. I have a 1.2GHz Celeron CPU and 192MB of RAM. The hardware encoding does fine, but the software decoding takes up 100% of my CPU. When I watch TV, the picture is jumpy because the CPU can't keep up. Also, when watching TV, it can 60 seconds to click on other windows since the CPU is completely occupied. For this reason, the pausing Live TV feature is not useful on my machine. It takes too long to open the live TV controls and click the pause button. In addition, the jumpiness of the picture makes my head hurt. I don't watch TV on this card. The box says 733MHz minimum for watching TV, but my 1.2GHz just dies. I recommend at least 1.7GHz to handle live and pause TV. Recording TV is okay, although by default, the TV watching window is on when recording. I had to get a registry editor script from Hauppage to turn off the window. I'm not sure why you can't click a button to turn off the window and the computationally intensive software decoding. (In general the software for this product is not user friendly, it's poorly thought out. I haven't found any bugs though.) With the window and decoding off, I can record programs in the background on my computer, using only 30% of the CPU. Watching those programs later is fine, the picture problems are only with live TV. Recording home videos works great. They stream to the computer and can be stored in a variety of formats from 12MB/sec down to .6MB/sec. There are a couple cute built-in programs to cut and past mpegs and add-in background audio to a video. Also there's a simple program to burn files to a DVD or VCD. There isn't much software for serious audio or video editing. There's no changing colors or distorting the picture or filtering the audio, just cut and splice. Overall, the product is good for my main use of storing VHS on my computer. The live TV is poor, but I shouldn't watch TV much anyway. = ) Software is hard-to-use, but it does what I need it to do for recording shows and burning VCDs.
Rating: 
Summary: Best yet for the price
Review: 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, 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!
Rating:
Summary: great product - no Linux...
Review: I was looking to build a standalone PVR system with this as the head piece of hardware. Unfortunately, it had no linux support, and I couldn't write it in. on my Windows PC, it ran great, the hardware MPEG encoding took strain off of my CPU and the remote, while futsy, worked well 90% of the time. I ended up returning it for the Linux reason, but would consider repurchasing it if I knew someone that could write the code for me. It was that good.
Rating: 
Summary: Avoid at all costs!
Review: I wasted a day and a half on this garbage. Tried three different boards, none worked. Their approved list is worthless.
Rating:
Summary: Software has issues
Review: I've had mine for over 6 months -- and love it.
Installation was easy. After installing the card inside the computer, I downloaded the updated drivers and software from Hauppauge's site. I've never had a problem with the drivers and am thrilled with the funtioning of the card and quality of the video. My only complaint is that the WinTV Scheduler software (VCR/DVR/timeshifting) did not work to my satisfaction (hence 4 rather than 5 stars). I replaced it with BeyondTV (available on the Web) and couldn't be happier.
I also use Hauppauge's MediaMVP which allows me to watch video recorded on the computer via WinTV on my digital television. The combination of WinTV 250, MediaMVP and BeyondTV is incredibly cool -- DVR heaven with no monthly fee (sorry TIVO). Ulimately, I also added a 120 Gig harddrive to accomodate all of the programs I wanted to record. I did not purchase these all at one time -- which helped manage the costs (sort of).
The WinTV 250 is also my preferred device for capturing video from my old camcorder to preserve memories from when my kids were small. Testing it against the pass-through feature of my Sony Handycam -- the WinTV 250 won, no contest.
Bottom line -- I love this set-up.
UPDATE: I'm considering a second WinTV 250 to work with the dual tuner capability of BeyondTV 3.5 when it is released.
Rating:
Summary: I love this product
Review: I've had mine for over 6 months -- and love it. Installation was easy. After installing the card inside the computer, I downloaded the updated drivers and software from Hauppauge's site. I've never had a problem with the drivers and am thrilled with the funtioning of the card and quality of the video. My only complaint is that the WinTV Scheduler software (VCR/DVR/timeshifting) did not work to my satisfaction (hence 4 rather than 5 stars). I replaced it with BeyondTV (available on the Web) and couldn't be happier. I also use Hauppauge's MediaMVP which allows me to watch video recorded on the computer via WinTV on my digital television. The combination of WinTV 250, MediaMVP and BeyondTV is incredibly cool -- DVR heaven with no monthly fee (sorry TIVO). Ulimately, I also added a 120 Gig harddrive to accomodate all of the programs I wanted to record. I did not purchase these all at one time -- which helped manage the costs (sort of). The WinTV 250 is also my preferred device for capturing video from my old camcorder to preserve memories from when my kids were small. Testing it with against the pass-through feature of my Sony Handycam -- the WinTV 250 won, no contest. Bottom line -- I love this set-up.
Rating:
Summary: Simple to Install; Terrific Product
Review: If you don't get sweaty palms opening up your PC and plugging in a new card, fear not. This was one of the easiest, most problem-free add-ons I've ever installed. Just follow the very simple instructions in the booklet (3 steps, really). I have a fairly recent Dell (Pentium 4). What you do is open your PC, plug the card into an available slot, close the PC, connect the cable TV cord to the back, install the driver from the CD that was provided, install the software. Done. The entire job took about 15 minutes. This installation was, quite simply, effortless. The tuner has a remarkably clear, vibrant picture. The controls are very intuitive (you don't need to read the booklet), and it records exceptional quality MPEGs. I could not be more pleased with this product.
Rating:
Summary: Wait for updated drivers
Review: If you go to Hauppauge's website, you'll learn that the PVR250 is not yet supported under WinXP. They are currently working on updated drivers, until then they do mention a work-around.
Rating:
Summary: WinTV PVR-250 As Good As It Gets!
Review: Just purchased TWO PVR-250's (model 980) from pcalchemy.com ($116 each). Installed in my home pc and one for my son who's going to college and didn't want to use a separate TV. Both are Dell Dimension 8300's - mine with 3.4ghz processor, 1 gig memory; his with 3.0ghz processor, 512 mb memory.
Installation went without a hitch, software loaded easily, although appears the drivers are not certified with Windows XP (mine is XP Pro, his is XP Home). XP didn't recognize the drivers, had to use the install CD, and got the warning message about using these drivers, but the install manual said to go ahead anyway. No conflicts have develped as a result (not so far, anyway).
I have already recorded some of the 2004 Olympics (shows scheduled for early, early AM airing). Using the Titan TV program guide is great, and has a link to the WinTV Scheduler so picking a program to schedule a recording session is a single mouse click function.
I know the computer has to be left on for the remote scheduling to work (duh), but I'm not sure if I actually have to have any of the software programs also running (like the scheduler). Don't want to risk missing anything right now, so I'll experiment with that at a later time.
Had to split my main cable TV input using a two-way splitter - cable in, one out to my cable box and the other to my WinTV card. Quality of the picture on my pc is excellent, very easy to resize the window.
One of the user preferences just blows me away. You can choose the quality of the recorde file (mpg2 format), which has a bearing on its ultimate size. I picked one of the max settings (12MBits/sec)and ended up with a 6-hour tv file that was over 26 gigabytes in size! Better have some descent hard drive space if you plan on doing a lot of recording!
I have a number of different DVD authorizing and editing software applications on my machine and used one to cut-up the file to remove commercials and other programming I didn't want included. After burning to a DVD+RW (also used a DVD-R) and playing it on my DVD player hooked to my TV, I was thrilled at the quality of the video. Plan on experimenting more with other settings to see how they come out.
After the initial scan program finds all available TV channels provided by your cable service, you can also edit the entries to put in the actual call signs of each channel, if you wish.
Application allows you to pause live TV, resume from there on a delayed basis, or go back to 'live' broadcast mode. Who needs to spend hundreds of $$ more on a TiVO?? You can also separately capture stop action or short video clips of the show.
One final note - I was VERY impressed with the vendor from whom I purchased these cards - pcalchemy.com. Placed the order on a Saturday evening and received them on Tuesday. Got immediate confirmations and progress reports by e-mail. Highly recommend them!
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