Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800 PCI-Express Hybrid Video Recorder

Comment:
I bought this tuner to replace hauppauges 150 card. Runs well on Vista 64bit. Tuning HD antenna signals i found was a hassle but theres lots of freeware programs that work perfectly with this card. Tuning of regular ntsc works perfectly with the bundled software.

Comment:
I was happy with my older Leadtech card which I used more for the FM tuner than the TV. When I built a new computer, I did not have room for the PCI Leadtech card so I got the PCI-E Hauppauge HVR 1800. There was some considerable swearing when I found that the FM tuner application had no record function and the remote will only work if you have Windows Vista (I have (XP Media).Otherwise, it seems to work well. I can get the thing to record by using Audacity but the old Leadtech tuner was so slick.

Comment:
This tuner was an excellent purchase. There are unencrypted QAM channels available in my area, and I wanted to see what we could get. Unfortunately Windows Media Center doesn't support QAM, so I needed to use Hauppauge's software, which I had some difficulty installing, but once I had it setup things work wonderfully. The signal quality is excellent and I am overjoyed to be able to use my HTPC as a PVR. My only real complaint is that the second tuner doesn't support NTSC, so I cannot use PiP, or record a different channel as I watch. Overall, however, an excellent purchase.

Comment:
Great buy. 100$ card that does NTSC, ATSC and QAM. Records flawlessly. Also has the benefit of being one of only a handful of useful PCI-E cards, so you can finally put the slot to good use. The bundled WinTV is pretty worthless, so I use Snapstream Beyond TV.

Comment:
having hauppauge pvr 150s for a long time and liking them, i chose this card for potential for hd as well as conventional cable capture. i wanted to get my soundcard back into my computer so a pci-e slot card at a good price seemed an option to consider and this had some good reviews. it maybe coincidence, but my board is only 3 weeks old and has been running flawlessly..from the moment i installed this card, my network adaptor onboard died..not just "drivers disappeared" or device conflict..it is gone in my system properties, in my bios..like it never existed. i pulled all my cards in the box and it didn't come back. ended up having to spend another 90 bucks for a wireless adaptor to sit 1 ft away from my router cause of course..i can't put a pci adaptor that's cheaper in, cause i would be back to square one, short a slot for the sound card. i blame motherboard manufacturers for dismissing pci slots too quickly when the maturity of pci-e devices (and availability) is pretty slim at this point. i would give this a 5 if not for the death of my onboard lan. the most generous i can be is a 3 due to that.

Comment:
A great tuner card for the money. The picture quality is good, there's very little lag time when switching channels, and it syncs perfectly with Vista's Media Centre. Watching and recording TV is a snap with this card. The remote is pretty basic, but otherwise, a good package.