Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350

There are many products made for PCs that aren’t directed towards gamers at all. While we at Techgage focus primarily on gamers, we are tech heads to our very core. This calling that we follow can take us to so many places and allow us to tap the full potential of our computes. It is users, like you and I, that cannot be satisfied when our PCs run the latest games at ungodly resolutions with all the eye candy turned on provided by our dual GPU systems.

You know you are one of these people. Why have a computer strictly for gaming when it can do so much more. True, the majority of people use their computers for gaming, word processing or editing video or audio and because of users like these; the modern PC is a wealth of computing power just waiting to be explored. One such example is video. How so? Let me show you.

Today at the Techgage labs, we are taking a break from reviewing products for gamers and looking at a product that will allows us to make our PC something much more valuable then just a gaming machine.

We all have heard of TiVo. The concept is a brilliant yet simple idea. Data (TV signal) streams into your TiVo box and from there, into your TV. Along the way, the TiVo stores that data allowing you to rewind live television. This also allows you to pause live TV and resume when you see fit. This is a beautiful idea but why can’t your PC do the same thing. This is where Hauppauge comes in.

Hauppauge is a global company providing TV capture cards, PVR cards and TV receivers for the PC community. With offices in Asia, Europe and North America, they have a good reach as well with the North American headquarters being located in New York.

Today we are taking a look at Hauppauge’s flagship PVR card, the WinTV PVR-350. The 350, as stated earlier, is Hauppauge’s top end PVR card and with MPEG encoding and decoding handled on the card, I am going to put it through its paces and see just how well it works.

There are a lot of programs that Hauppauge provides to anyone who purchases this product. Among them, there is the editing software and the actual programs that you will use to record/capture video, listen to FM radio and allow you to use your remote.

The packaging is what anyone would expect from a reputable hardware company. The box is colorful and full of enough information to give the possible buyer more than enough information to make an intelligent purchase.

Pretty straight forward and to the point but with more than enough information for anyone to make an educated call when considering purchasing the 350.

The inside of the packaging is also well done and secure.

You can see in the above picture that Hauppauge bundles more than enough "extras" for anyone that purchases this unit. There is the customary manual and driver CD along with the card itself. Also included is a RCA connectors, an FM antennae, an IR receiver and a remote. Throughout the review, I will be looking at the remote and all of the functionality of all of these items.