I run the Hauppage USB 950Q Tuner on a Windows Vista 32-bit system with a high end Nvidia 9800 640MB PCI-E video card, dual core Pentium 2.8ghz processors and a Creative Xi-Fi PCI soundcard, with 3GB's of system RAM. This is well above the minimum requirements.My primary use involves plugging in the coaxial cable line directly to the USB Tuner, in order to record certains shows a couple of times a week.
I did some basic research and read the various reviews of what was out there. My video card takes up so much space, that I didn't want to fool with squeezing a PCI card inside the case, a USB card that I could even take on the road with my lap top easily, seemed perfect.
This version comes with (at this time) the latest Hauppage drivers on the CD. It's best to install the CD apps first before plugging the USB device in. If you don't, make sure to cancel the Windows prompt to find drivers on it's own.
I also had to install the WinTV application in order for Windows Media Center to recognize the signal. I prefer to use WMC because of it's very nice guide, genre summaries of "what's on" and the speed at which it operates. I still need to fool around a bit with the aspect ratio, as I have a widescreen 24" flat panel monitor.
After the 10 minutes or so it takes to scan all of the analog cable channels, I played the live TV and the picture was grainy, choppy, and kept stuttering out. It took me a while to figure out it was a bad signal from the cable line. Keep this in mind if your picture is snowy, having blips or a white line running through it intermittently etc..., you probably need a Cable Signal Amplifier. I got a bi-directional cable TV amplifier from Radioshack for $34 and after plugging it in the right way, the signal and picture for analog channels was noticeably improved, and I am now reasonably happy with it. Make sure your fuzzy picture is not a result of this, if you have any splitters on your line, multiple TV's and an internet modem hooked up to your cable lines, an amplifier can work wonders. I haven't seen this obvious remedy mentioned in any other reviews, so wanted to make sure I put it in here.
I also tested the included atenna, and the local, free QAM or HD channels it picked up, looked fantastic, the analog channels were too choppy but clearer than the cable picture, I didn't spend much time with the antenna though. The problem is there are very few of these HD/QAM channels available, even here in a major city where I live, and they are just versions of the local network station (which I rarely watch). Literally 4-6 of these, if that.
If the day comes where everything is broadcast in HD, this card will make the picture rather remarkable, for obvious reasons being you don't have to convert an analog signal and the resolutions match hi-res PC monitors much more closely.
WinTV is very cumbersome and slow, I notice a slightly better picture with it at this point, versus WMC, but WMC's functionality make it the preferred application.
Unfortunately I cannot find a way to easily switch back and forth between the Antenna source and Analog Cable line, without having to re-scan everything which takes 10+ minutes for WinTV, less for WMC. I don't think there is an easy way, even with another splitter.
So, buy a cable tv amplifier, (bi-directional if you use PPV or Indemand services etc..,) make sure you have a powerful video card (more important than your CPU but they ultimately both work together) and at least 2GB of system RAM if you're on Vista ecspecially.
This should give you adequate results and feel this is probably one of the better, more affordable, PC TV with HD/QAM options out there, and should get better with time as broadcasts move to an all-digital signal.
Of course if you have a DVR or hi-def cable box, use the S-video connection if possible, and your HD channels and other digital channels will probaby look and play even better.
When you hook this up you may want to use the USB extender cable to minimize strain on your computer's USB port from the cable attached to the tuner weighing down on the port.
Needless to say, the only disadvantage of this type of product vs. a plug-in card or USB box is that you must chooses if you want CATV or OTA HDTV, since many of the cards and USB boxes offer separate F-connectors for cable and OTA signals. Their may be a way to combine both signals on one cable, but I did not attempt that. Video input is separate via a small port on the tuner stick, so that input can be used with either setup. Also, to the best of my knowledge this stick does not have a hardware-based MPEG-2 decoder. Some products require at least one tuner in their setup to have a hardware-based decoder, so you may want to double-check your application to be sure.
In short, this is a great product and I would buy another one. I've used Hauppauge products for years, and found them to be well designed and reasonably priced. This tuner continues that tradition.This product has problems with Windows XP (and possibly ATI video cards). Could not get a picture at all on one computer but had sound. Audio had lots of static on another computer with a great picture. It would not work on one of our laptops at all. But, it worked great on a new laptop with Windows Vista Ultimate. Hauppauge's fix for these computers was an older driver in which the remote control would not work.Bought to view cable TV on my laptop computer. Plugged into a coax cable and into usb port it works fine. Only issue is the audio sync with picture. If I work on an application on my computer then come back to TV the sync is off. I need to change channel then back to the show I was watching to fix the timing. But it does work well so I recommend this product.
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