Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 ATSC/ClearQAM/NTSC TV Tuner White Box 1101 PCI Interface - OEM

Pros: Vista Home Basic recognized the card and installed it's own drivers for it; I never needed to put in the bundled CD at all. Got it working just fine the first day.

Cons: DON'T READ THE MANUAL! These are still shipping with a manual and CD for a different variety of the card. Newegg's specs still say it comes with an IR Blaster, but it doesn't.

Overall Review: Based on other reviews on Newegg, I never even installed the bundled software. I'm using gbpvr instead- it's free, it looks good, and it works. Bottom Line: The card is good, but don't expect the other stuff in the box to do the same. Assume you're buying a bare card and you won't be disappointed.

Pros: Good performance under Windows. OK performance under Linux when configured properly, which is easier said than done.

Cons: Typical ridiculous headaches when trying to get video capture hardware to operate properly in Linux. The card is supported by the kernel V4L/DVB drivers (www.linuxtv.org) for NTSC and ATSC reception, and the onboard MPEG2 encoder is supported by the cx18 driver, but currently the (claimed) QAM decoding and "FM radio" reception do not seem to be functional. Even with properly configured driver support for the card, configuring MythTV to work with it is a ridiculous pain. Once you figure out how to "trick" MythTV into accessing the card properly, find and tune the available channels, write the channel list to the database, and then work out the many AV configuration gremlins to be able to display the live video and audio from the card to the screen without MythTV stubbornly displaying a blank screen or locking up, you get a very decent HD image. I made multiple attempts to get this thing working reliably under Mythbuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 8.10, and Knoppmyth, without great results.

Overall Review: The hardware works fine. Windows users should be pleased. Unfortunately, the current state of Linux tv capture and playback software is abysmal. MythTV's frontend and backend configuration interfaces appear to have been designed by sadists. Even basic usage conventions, such as which direction you press to go up or down in a list of options, will regularly reverse without warning. I'm not sure why no other Linux tv capture/display software project has appeared in the last several years, because MythTV is barely usable in its current form. People want to watch TV, not spend 60+ hours trying to configure a glorified VCR. You would think that one of the tuner card manufacturers would have released some type of modern cross-platform tuner/viewer software by now, but unfortunately they all seem to be stuck in 1995 in terms of their business model. Highly "techie" people are migrating to Linux... Hauppauge should consider supporting it.

Pros: Great card, works very well picking up OTA HD and Clear QAM HD. Make sure to check out SageTV and BeyondTV if you are serious about recording HD channels. The software included doesn't cut it, but the actual card has proved to be well engineered.

Cons: none.

Pros: Able to install quickly in a PCI slot which is key if you have a 2 slot PCI-E video card that takes out a PCI-E 2.0 1x slot. Windows 7 64-bit pro identifies it quickly. The hardware on this does not split your signal like a 2250 would so you don't sacrifice your signal. Picks up a lot of channels (see cons)..

Cons: While it picks up a lot of analog on the initial scan for channels, you need to go into setup, guide, edit channels to enable a lot of digital channels. The con is that even if it gets perfect signal, if it doesn't identify the TV listing for a channel (say WNBCDT4), you can enable and set the listing to combine with a know listing you already have. I did this for about 35 channels just to get them combined with their analog versions, and then got 5 more digital channels that had no existing analog version.

Overall Review: Love that this is a PCI card, since I do have a Gigabyte mobo where the PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot overlaps a PCI-E 2.0 x1 slot where I could not put in a 2250. Plan your build wisely and check out placement of the PCI/E slots to see if your vid card (mine a 5570) is double wide and eats up a slot you need.

Pros: Outstanding card. This card w/ up to date drivers takes the load off your CPU doing all the grunt work. Currently watching recorded HD World Series @ 2% cpu load as I type this.

Cons: The software included, WinTV. If you are serious about making this card work, and man does it, you need to invest in the software to get it's full potential. I'm running this card with SageTV on Cyberlink (powerdvd) codecs and it kicks booty. The cyberlinks codecs help with viewing recordings using other players other than sagetv's plus give recordings a better pic/sound. As mentioned by other reviewers, you need to download the latest drivers for this card to make it operate at optimum efficiency. It takes some effort to get this card up and runnning right.

Overall Review: This card, a primo OTA antenna and the software mentioned, has convinced me to drop off the cable & sat grid. I was ready to sell my HDTV. I can't believe the money those grifters want. You pay out the ying/yang for what amounts to commercials & infomercials to scam even more money out of you.

Pros: Picture seems fine and recordings seems to be good quality.

Cons: Don't use the drivers or the program that comes with it, they don't work, go to their site and download the newest version of them. Was not the easiest to get working right away, but was not too difficult either, just took some time.

Overall Review: The good news is, quick tech support if you need it.

Pros: Fast setup. No issues. Cheap.

Cons: Instructions recieved were not for this product. The major issue is the poor picture quality. Most all channels have lines or bars going horizontally or vertically. Software is realy a joke. As others have said, dont bother loading it. If you want a good clear picture do not get this card.

Overall Review: I suspect the picture interference is from the the computer itself. I moved the card around into other slots and the picture quality changes. Had other cards, ATI and Pinnacle, that did not have this problem. I guess you buy cheap you get junk.

Pros: Card is recognized by Vista and TV watching with Media Center is very straight forward.

Cons: The card does not come with the software necessary to make the s-video input work. The Newegg add touts this as a selling point, but in fact, the feature is non-functional. This seems dishonest to me. To get the s-video to work you need to buy software from Hauppage for ten bucks. And they will only mail you the software, you cannot download it. I feel like someone stole ten dollars from me.