Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350

[PAGETITLE=Introduction] 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. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Bundled Goods] Let's take a look at the bundled items: Here we see the FM antennae (pink) and the IR sensor. The FM antennae is connected with a coaxial screw on connector and the IR sensor plugs into the card with a plug similar to what a set of headphones would use. You can see here, the RCA/S-Video input connector. This allows you to connect either a VCR, DVD player or virtually any other piece of hardware with video out that uses RCA jacks or S-Video. The remote is setup nicely with numerous buttons for all sorts of uses. You can switch between TV, videos, music, pictures and radio. You also have all the buttons that any remote would have as well such as channel up and down, volume up and down, play, fast forward, rewind, play, stop, pause, skip up and down. Here you have the very thorough manual and the driver disk. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Close Look At The Card] Now let's take a look at the card itself: In the above pictures, you can see the card in all its glory. From the pictures, you can see that the card is obviously using the PCI interface. There is also a good view of the TV, FM, S-Video, S-Video/Audio in, Line in and the IR jack. That's a fair amount of ports for the back of this card so let's see how it performs. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Specifications] Before we get to the performance, let's take a look at the specs provided by Hauppauge themselves. Included in the WinTV-PVR-350 package WinTV-PVR-350 PCI bus card with 125 channel cable-ready TV tuner, hardware MPEG-2 encoder, hardware MPEG-2 decoder, dbx-TV stereo, FM radio receiver, FM radio antenna. Infra-red remote control receiver with a 1 meter extender cable. Infra-red remote control transmitter. A/V breakout cable with S-Video, composite video and stereo audio out. WinTV CD-ROM includes: WinTV2000 application for TV in a window, Program Pause, TV record and video playback, plus TV output. WinTV-Scheduler, for scheduling your TV recordings, and with TitanTV. WinTV-Editor, for editing your home videos or TV recordings. Uleads DVD MovieFactory, to author and burn VCD, SVCD and DVD movies. Installation and reference manual. System Requirements Processor requirements: Pentium III processor 733MHz or faster, min 128MB RAM and 10GB HDD. Microsoft Windows XP/2000/Me/98SE. Free PCI slot. Sound card. CD-RW or DVD writer for burning CD's or DVD's (optional) VGA card (PCI or AGP) with Direct Draw support. Also provided is a list, to you the end user, of all the features that the 350 provides. WinTV-PVR-350 has these great features: Watch TV on your PC screen using a 125 channel cable ready (or aerial) TV tuner. Surf the net while you watch TV on your PC screen! Record your TV shows to disk using the built-in hardware MPEG-2 encoder. At DVD quality, 2 Gigabytes of disk space is used per hour of recorded video. Play your video recordings on your TV set with the included hardware MPEG-2 decoder. Will play your recorded home videos, too! Turn your home video tapes (or TV recordings) into MPEG movies, then burn them onto CD or DVD! The included Ulead DVD MovieFactory allows you to author and burn Video DVD's, S-VCD's or video CD's. Play them on your home DVD* player! Pause live TV shows with instant replay, fast forward and rewind. Ddbx stereo decoder, for great TV sound. Includes WinTV-Scheduler, so you can schedule your TV recordings on a daily, weekly or once only schedule. Includes TitanTV, the on-line TV program guide, for automatic scheduling of your TV recordings. Includes the WinTV-Editor, so you can cut and trim your videos without losing video quality! Technically speaking WinTV-PVR-350 contains a highly integrated MPEG-1/2 hardware encoder and hardware MPEG-1/2 decoder. WinTV-PVR-350 uses the hardware MPEG encoder for watching live TV, for pausing live TV and for recording. The encoded MPEG-2 video is sent over the PCI bus, where it is stored on the PCs hard disk (for pause and record) and simultaneously decoded in software for display on the PC screen (in all modes). When playing recorded video onto an external TV monitor, the on-board hardware MPEG-2 video decoder is used. WinTV-PVR-350 supports three DVD quality profiles: DVD extra long play, DVD long play and DVD standard play. In addition, there are record profiles for SVCD and VCD formats, plus a "raw" 12Mbit/sec record. Like I said earlier, this information was pulled right off Hauppauge's web page and can also be found on the 350's box. Now that we have that out of the way, let's get into the 350 itself. I have installed the 350 into my PC so let's take a look at this: Here you can see the 350, snug between my lower 7800 GT and my Audigy 2 ZS sound card. I know that in this review it doesn't play a whole lot but here are my system specs: Testing System Processor - AMD 3700+ San Diego 1MB L2. Motherboard - DFI LanParty Ultra D (SLi mod) Video Card - eVga 7800 GT. Power Supply - Silverstone ST56F Strider. Memory - 512 x 2 Crucial Ballistix. Hard Disk - 1 WD Raptor 74 GB / Seagate 160 GB. Sound Card - Creative Audigy ZS2. OS - Windows XP Pro / SP2. Once I have all of the drivers and programs installed onto my hard drive, I am looking forward to playing with the 350 and seeing how well it performs. As a tech head and a gamer, I am constantly looking at my CPU resources. I am curious as to how much this 350 will affect my overall PCing experience when I am encoding a video. There is even a program that you can use to program your 350 to record certain shows and not others. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Testing & Conclusion] As it stands, I am a history nerd. The only TV I really ever watch is the History Channel, and ESPN to catch up on my beloved Indianapolis Colts, the Pacers and the St. Louis Cardinals. The majority of my time however is taken up by the History Channel. I also catch up on the news as much as I can but usually, time just doesn't allow me to watch the TV that I sometimes would. Above you can see the starting screen for WinTV32. This is the program that you will use to watch TV, record TV and pause TV as you see fit. You can also snap screen shots with this program as well. Below are a few screen shots that I took using this program and are at a native resolution of 1280x1024. While these aren't high def at all, they do look great when in motion on your monitor screen at full screen size. Now we are going to take a look at the radio interface. There isn't a whole lot to this program. You start it via the start button or with the remote. This brings up the pictured box where you can tune into any FM signal your normal radio picks up. This was nice but the reception was not what I would like to have had. My normal radio on my stereo does a much better job with reception but then again, it was designed for that specifically, the 350 was not built with FM in mind so this, to me, isn't a huge deal. Recording is done in much the same way as the TV is done. You connect your VCR or DVD, and record it...

Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350

Page 3 – Close Look At The Card