Pros: In theory this card is excellent. Dual tuners...record two at once, watch one while recording...Great idea.

Cons: I had the same problems as others where the new chip type (Samsung) got very poor reception on the lower 15 channels or so. And I mean the quality was unbearable. Reminds me of rabbit ear antenna reception 20 years ago. Just to make sure it was the card, I put in my PVR 150 (basically the single tuner edition of this card) and it worked beautifully. Hauppauge better switch back to the Philips chips or this card is bound to flop.

Overall Review: This is the first negative review I've had to leave. However, Newegg was outstanding (as usual) from the time I ordered until the time I RMA'd the card. Refund was issued since the card was out of stock at the time. I guess I'll just order 2 PVR 150 cards and split the signal with a signal amplifier. Good thing I have spare PCI slots.

Pros: The video quality is excellent. The onboard encoders take almost all of the load off of the processor, leaving it free to perform other PVR related functions. It works extremely well under Linux, though installation could be tricky for non-geeks. That said this is a popular card and there are plenty of detailed walkthroughs (and what is a non-geek doing installing a tv tuner card on linux anyway?). If you simply follow the directions it will be working in no time.

Cons: The card I got from New Egg was a bad samsung card. It could tune channels 2-13 poorly and above that I recieved pure static. Hauppauge tech support was awesome, I was connected to a person very quickly and they came to the conclusion it was one of the bad samsung cards almost immediately. They RMAed it and I had my new card within a week. The hauppauge tech support even diagnosed the problem without making me try it in windows. There are bad cards out there but hauppauge stands up for their product. If you get a bad one, they will replace it at no cost. (well, $3.00 in postage to send it to them).

Overall Review: While there are bad cards around, the hauppauge tech support is great and the tuner is great. I have it running on an Ubuntu system running MythTV and I highly recommend it!

Pros: Good quality and two tuners. I hadn't thought having two tuners would make a big difference but I utilize both very often. Very easy setup with the right third party software. I tried it with both Sage and Beyond TV and it did well with either. (Can't tell you which one I went with in this review) FM Tuner? I forgot it even had one. Never used it.

Cons: I was surprised at how VERY large this card is. It dwarfs my video and sound cards and was just about too long for my asus board without running into other components. TV quality on my CRT monitor isn't what I had imagined, but after recording to DVD or CD, shows/movies look great on my television. MUCH better than recorded videotape.

Overall Review: I looked at tuner cards for a long time along with the software for viewing and recording. I don't think I could have been any better prepped for it. The MCE in the model name, along with some of these reviews seems to imply that you must be running windows media center with this card. I am not and this is definitely the card I'm using. Check the Hauppauge web site to be sure though. Also, remember to look into things like splitters, etc. You may need them!

Pros: 2 Channels recording at the same time. Installation of the hardware a breeze on my customized system. Quality is top notch.

Cons: Quite a few. Not that it would have prevented me from purchasing it in the first place, but quite a few things they need to fix. 1. POOR DRIVERS. When watching most channels, the image quality for live and recorded was below VCR standards with a bad connection. The drivers that come with it and even the ones on thier website plain suck. I tried about 3 different PVR softwares and was about to call the card defective at this point because i literally spent a few days tryign to figure this out. Finally on a forum for Snapstream, someone who contacted hauppauge said that they know about it and released beta drivers. Luckily it was posted with a link, i installed them and the picture quality was phenomial since. 2. Poor Documentation 3. No Useable Software. Would have been nice if they had something. This is basically useless without software. Why wouldnt they have something, even if basic. There was actually somethign to correct myself. But it wasnt what i would even call basic.

Overall Review: Would have been nice if on thier website they mention about the faulty drivers and post them for download. Or even a user forum. For those newbies, i did the research and found PVR software that i hope helps. Snapstream Beyond TV - Very Basic stuff. Does what it needs to and thats it. SageTV - Many more options for the tweaker person. At first i thought it was too many options, but when i was using other applications, i thought , man, i wish it would do it. Sure enough, SageTV did it. U can even watch your streaming tv remotely. You can do this with other softwares too. GBPVR - this is free software. I tested it out a bit and honestly, thought it was a pain for a newbie. When i did get it to work, performance was lacking. Very slow. ChrisTV - I only used this for a day. I didnt care for the menu system. Seems like a programmer created it with limited graphical knowlege. TIVO was successfull because of the easy to use interface. Winner - SAGETV

Pros: The picture quality is great. Two tuners! Works great with Beyond TV.

Cons: I don't know how it is to install on MCE, but installation on an XP Pro is slightly tricky. After a few tries using different PCI slots, I finally got it to work. The instructions for installation on XP is bad. More...I have a FX-60 with this card. After installing the card, everything work fine until I tried to reboot my computer. 9 times out of 10 the computer hangs upon reboot and I can't even get into Windows. After a lot of work to no avail, I contacted customer support (don't even try to call; you won't get through...use email instead). This is what they emailed me: We have seen some conflicts in the way windows handles the bus when a 500 and athlon dual core processor are installed on some motherboards (the AN8 line included). The only way to correct the problem at this time is to physically modify the boards. I will send the board in and see what happens.

Overall Review: Once I get this board fixed, should be a great piece of hardware. A lot of headaches...sure wish Hauppauge would have told people about the incompatibility.

Pros: Older board revisions worked well.

Cons: New tuners have caused a lot of problem on what used to be a great board. Check anywhere that does HTPC reviews, this board died off. Hauppage still hasn't responded to my complaints about the board. Only one tuner worked, even with a signal amplifier, and depending on which driver is loaded... you will have 3 channels which just won't work.

Overall Review: Newegg should really reset this whole product review. This is not the same product that was originally titled the"PVR 500" as they have changed all the components at a board level. There hasn't been a good review of this board since it changed its tuners.

Pros: Dual tuners, and all the other good stuff folks have mentioned here

Cons: 100% Hardware Incompatibility with AMD Dual Core Processors. The system will lock up at boot up and/or will crash. 100%. It took me 3 weeks to narrow down and pinpoint this problem with my rig. Spoke with Hauppague Technical Support this morning. They are aware of the problem and they have a preliminary hardware update fix. That means that once i get notified i will need to send the board to them for repair/upgrade to a new chipset. Questions? Contact Jerry Henriquez at jhenriquez@hauppauge.com He's the technician that is helping me.

Overall Review: Even with a hardware bug I would still buy this card.

Pros: This card supplements a PVR-250 as the bank of tuners in my MythTV backend. With PCI slots at a premium, this card gives you twice the bang for the buck. Video quality is on-par with the PVR-250 (not super, but above average). This card is basically two PVR-150 cards with a built-in antenna splitter (the 2nd coax connector is for the FM tuner). Thankfully, mine came with the Philips tuners and not the problematic Samsung ones. Is you a building a home-brew DVR, this is the card you want.

Cons: The card supposedly supports PCI-X without any mods, but Linux could not program the PCI bridge chip when the card was inserted in a

Overall Review: Mine came with an audio/video dongle, though I have no use for it. A second dongle is needed to feed both encoders.