Hauppauge PCTV HD Pro Stick 801e USB 2.0 Interface

Pros: Excellent quality. Works flawlessly in Media Center.

Cons: Heats up with heave usage. Software is as useless as a pink flamingo in Antarctica.

Other Thoughts: Seriously do any of the tv tuner manufacturers even test the software they include with their hardware?

Pros: Picture looks great, software/driver finally works like it should. I have been recording the Olympics for a few days now.

Cons: for the first year and a half maybe I was so angry this thing didnt work half the time. updated drivers got new software that is odd, but it now works

Other Thoughts: I use windows media center on win7 64bit. 2.5 quad core. 4gb ram

Pros: Good physical appearance.
Product is returnable.

Cons: Could not receive digital signals, despite the fact that the stations are close and I have a good quality amplified antenna. I suspect this is due to problems with the software not the device itself; see below.

The software is abysmal. Trying to run this in Win 7, x64, and the drivers install correctly it seems. Unfortunately, the viewer program is full of bugs and crashes on average half of the time it is run. The problem that makes me loose faith is that I get a wide assortment of error messages, not just the same repeated error.

Other Thoughts: As an electrical/computer engineer who makes consumer devices, I have seen this far to often. A product may be physically well designed, but in order to sell it quickly, the maker pushes it out the door without finishing or adequately testing the software. Good quality control would ensure that this installs and runs somewhat smoothly...

Also tried to install this under Ubuntu, but did not have success. The drivers are in fact still in development for Unix, so I didn't expect much.

Overall, this thing is a headache. I should have read the reviews on other sites before picking it up.

Pros: Works well if you can find drivers.

Cons: no drivers available for windows 7 yet. requires processing power form CPU which is bad for laptops. i had too much lagging on HDTV channels on air.

Other Thoughts: could have been better with windows 7 driver and less usage of CPU.

Pros: Hardware was easy to install, but how hard can USB get? Software installed easily enough.

Cons: Repeated software updates, as if they didn't have it finished when sold. Will not work on Win Vista at all, picture quality on XP is so-so, other tuners on the same line give much better performance.

Other Thoughts: Originally bought this when Pinnacle owned the rights, they sold out to Hauppauge, now neither comapny has software available that makes the stick work. Windows does recognize the hardware but the software that comes with the stick fails to see the hardware, final result is that the product is totally useless.

Pros: This product is definately worth the investment, the video quality is amazing. I live on a military installation next to a lot of different kinds of interference but it still picks up about a dozen clear channels. I'm running opensuse linux and it was a breeze to install with the v4l-dvd drivers, kaffeine media player picked it up automatically.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: Seems to work a lot better under linux. The picture quality is way better and it even picks up more channels. The remote doesn't work under linux however, but with a wireless keyboard and kaffeine's keyboard interface that really isn't a problem. I havn't got the radio working yet either but that's a project for another time.