It's great qualtity for the price. I had an EVGA dual tuner TV card prior to buying this one. The 500 MCE gives you a better picture and more connectivity. The colors are vibrant and the decoding is excellent. The only short coming is that MPEG decoder software is not included in the package and you'll have to purchase your own.Word of wisdom: If your picture is choppy check if your hard drive speed is up to par. I wasted almost a week; formating my hard drive 3 times, replaced my tuner card twice and swapped my CPU. I was about to buy a new mother board before I realised my hard drive was the problem. I Bought a new SATA drive and it was smoooooooth sailing.
In short, even though this product might be more expensive then most, the cost is made up by great quality, functionality, and reliability. A must-have for anyone building a home-brewed PVR (Personal Video Recorder).
For anyone who is wondering, the awesome linux compatibility of all Hauppage products is why I will never buy anything other than hauppage.
Buy Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500MCE 2-Tuner PCI-Based Digital Video Recorder (NTSC) Now
I'll preface that I came to this from a WinTV-PVR 250. The quality on that card is much better than on this one. I was a bit disappointed (even though I read the reviews that said as much). Basically, I had to, though, because I watch and record so many shows (and will soon be using it in a multi-person home), so a dual tuner has become necessary.Not saying the quality is unwatchable or anything like that. It's just not as good as the 150/250. Oh well. It's very much worth the money for what it does (dual tuners), but for me, it's just going to function as a stop gap until another company (or Hauppauge) comes out with a better dual tuner -keeping in mind that I don't want to use Windows MCE since Beyond TV is more extensible IMHO (can you say Hydra TV server with a bunch of Beyond TV Links? see http://www.snapstream.com/Community/Articles/hydra/default.asp for what I mean).
Read Best Reviews of Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500MCE 2-Tuner PCI-Based Digital Video Recorder (NTSC) Here
I think this is about the best of the current crop (end of year 2005) of dual tuner video cards. However, I am still looking forward to the next generation as this card and many in the same category have somewhat "mushy" video, slightly washed out color. This particular model has audio problems on some channels about 5% of the time, so recorded shows are sometimes not watchable. New drivers did not help. You can only use one type of video input at a time: either the 2 tuner coax inputs or the 2 A/V inputs (this is probably a limitation of MCE, not the card itself). It installed flawlessly and setup in Windows MCE was effortless -perfect score on this count. The FM tuner works well, however for some reason you can't listen to FM while tuning a channel/recording (could be an MCE limitation again). Overall I love this card, but as I said, very anxious to see what the next gen offers.Want Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500MCE 2-Tuner PCI-Based Digital Video Recorder (NTSC) Discount?
I have a souped-up SONY media center computer that worked great under Windows XP MCE, .... until I upgraded to Vista.After a frustrating month trying to get tv back on my SONY RB60G computer, Hauppauge came through for me.
This card is built very similar to the SONY Gigapocket tv-tuner card. but this one has dual tuners and an FM radio too.
Vista saw the card right away, and had it integrated into Media Center in no time. No sweat.
It works great.
FM radio is nothing to brag about, but it picks up four clear stations, and I have StepVoice so I can now record songs off the radio too.
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