PVR Wire

 
Hauppauge U.K. sent PVR Wire a PVR-150 to review a few months ago, but we've been so busy keeping up with the latest news in the world of PVRs, that we haven't had time to burst open the shrink-wrapping and give it a whirl.

However, we remedied that situation last night, and decided to set up the PCI card to find out what all the fuss is about.

Hauppauge Digital have a long and esteemed track-record in the TV card market, and their recent developments in software and hardware encoding technology has put them right at the front of the TV/PVR race.

From a home-user perspective, the PVR-150 represents Hauppauge's stepping-on point for a PCI-based card, costing around $50-$60 in the USA, and about £50-£60 in the U.K. -- and the unit was also recently upgraded to MCE certification, allowing Windows Media Center users to add a second tuner to their system.

Contents: The box contained a remote control, IR blaster, spare batteries, installation CD-ROM, a quick-guide set-up manual and the PCI card itself.

I didn't bother with the IR blaster or remote, because I wasn't planning on using my PC as a 2nd television, but the set-up of both seemed straightforward enough.

Set-up: Installation was hassle-free - I opened up my PC, found a spare PCI slot and plugged in the card, then screwed everything back together and re-booted. Windows XP Pro recognized the PCI card instantly, and the quick-guide instructions were flawless; just pop in the CD and let Windows install everything automatically. I didn't even have to reboot.

Watching and recording: Following a quick scan for the channels feeding the card from my Sky+ RF output, the WinTV2000 TV viewer software sparked to life, and I was watching my Sky+ television feed via my LG 17" LCD PC monitor in under 10 minutes.

The picture wasn't spectacularly crisp, but it was perfectly watchable at 720 x 576, and in full-screen "TV-mode" (if a little grainy up-close), although 640 x 480 tended to produce the cleanest results.

I wasn't able to test the Teletext functions on the card, because my Sky+ feed isn't an analog broadcast signal, but I moved quickly on to the built-in PVR functions, and I didn't have any trouble trying out the live pause (the buffer was set to 1000MB, or just over an hour of video), but as soon as I returned to normal TV viewing, the picture became blurry and I needed to continually re-boot the software to clear it up (that is, until I discovered the "Primary" application which allows you to force overlay on certain graphics cards).

One-touch recording was just as easy to use as live pause - a single press of the OTR function button recorded video for 15 minutes, with each additional press adding another 15 mins to the overall recording time. The WinTV Scheduler software was also relatively easy to use as a basic PVR (as long as you name each channel appropriately in the channel configurator), although a web-based Electronic Program Guide updater wouldn't go amiss.

Additional software bundled with the PVR-150 included a VCD and DVD making utility, and a copy of Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 SE. The WinTV software itself included a variety of drop-down menu options for capturing video -- from "SVCD Standard Play" to "DVD Extra Long Play", which translated as "totally dire" or "perfectly acceptable". I finally settled on "DVD Standard Play", as it didn't use up too much hard drive space.

Conclusions: If you're on a budget, you really can't go wrong with a PVR Card like the Hauppauge PVR-150; it was easy to set-up, it performs reasonably well as a basic video recorder for a standard desktop PC, or as part of an MCE set-up.

What I liked: the simple set-up, the one-touch recording function and the variable quality capture settings.

What I didn't like: the grainy picture at higher resolutions and the lack of a web-based EPG scheduler.

Marks: 3/5 for performance, 4/5 for cost.