Ratings: Ease of Use, Performance: 23/25, Look & Feel: 24/25, Features & Software 20/25, How much I enjoy 24/25
Total: 91/100

Hauppauge has been bringing TV functionality to the PC since 1992 and they know what they are doing. The WINTV brand has been evolving and bringing television to PC's with great quality, easy installation and superb features.

HDTV is the best and newest technology that is sweeping the world and will be the standard very soon. How soon? In 2008 the US government will start sending households coupons to purchase digital to analog converters so people can transfer the digital signal that broadcasters are sending out over the airwaves. These converters will be needed for televisions that are not digital television ready. And that means most of those big CRT televisions that are now going on sale everywhere. Companies like Samsung, Sony and others are stopping production of those older CRT televisions and making the switch to LCD TV's with the newer digital technology.

This means that broadcast stations will no longer be required to send out analog or the old standard television signals but will have almost completely switched over to digital. Why would they do this you might ask? Digital television is so much crisper and clearer, with no ghosting or static in the picture. If the signal is not being received as well as needed all you will get is a stuttering in the video and audio instead of white noise. The picture quality just does not compare with analog television, crisp clear picture and very good audio is the result of the better technology.

The company broadcasting also have several advantages for themselves as well. With each channel they can piggyback three of their channels onto the same digital signal. The equipment is also better and less expensive than analog broadcast due to the newer technology. This equates to less cost and better selection for each company broadcasting. I have been surfing local channels since hooking up my HDTV and finding some of the local channels due use all three of their channels. One is their main channel and on one it is another main channel that broadcasts reruns of popular shows. The third is usually an all news and weather channel that is nice for people who do not have cable and would like to quickly find out weather forecasts.

The Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 is currently the most featured PCI card addition for receiving HDTV for a desktop computer. I have even read on the internet where people set up a computer and Windows Media Center as a home entertainment system using one of these cards and a barebones windows system. Using a simple setup and easy to follow instructioons you can have digital TV on your monitor in no time. You do not even need expensive antennas or cable television to receive digital television.

Here are the features straight from Hauppauge:

WinTV-HVR-1600: The WinTV-HVR-1600 is a single slot PCI board which brings analog and ATSC digital TV to your PC. The WinTV-HVR-1600 has two tuners: a 125 channel cable ready tuner and an ATSC digital TV tuner. ATSC digital TV is the new over-the-air high definition TV for North America.
System requirements:
Processor requirements: 2.2 GHz P4 or equivalent (minimum) required for displaying ATSC high definition TV.
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home, Pro or Media Center Edition. Also Windows Vista Premium certified.
Graphics with 64 MB memory (or greater)
Available PCI slot
Sound card.
Included in this package:
WinTV-HVR-1600 PCI bus card with 125 channel cable-ready TV tuner, ATSC receiver, hardware MPEG-2 encoder, dbx-TV stereo decoder, S-Video/composite and audio inputs.
IR remote control receiver.
IR Blaster (infra-red remote control transmitter), to control satellite and cable TV set top boxes.
WinTV-HVR-1600 CD-ROM includes:
WinTV2000 application for TV in a window plus TV recording, pause and playback.
WinTV-Scheduler for scheduling your TV recording, and with link to TitanTV.com*.
WinTV MPEG editor for high quality cutting and pasting of your standard definition video movies.
Ulead® DVD MovieFactory™, to create your own videos on DVD or CD*

The WinTV 1600 comes with the PCI TV receiver board, a remote control, a driver CD, a Ulead DVD MovieFactory program and some cables for the remote. The card is very easy to install and set up with the enclosed cd drivers. Simply install the PCI card in an available PCI slot and run the drivers. A few programs will install including a IR remote controller program that sits in your taskbar tray. Once the programs are installed you have to go through some setup of the card digitally.

The card connects to an antenna, cable or satellite TV system using the two rear connections. Once your antenna or other connection is made simply run the WinTV program and the startup will run through a channel setup. The program will ask what connection you use for your receiver such as the antenna in my case. I found out that the antenna for the digital and analog signals are the two separate coax cable connections on the rear so once I had that I found several local channels. The analog section found all my local channels plus one that does come in very well on my other televisions but does work very well with the WinTV.

The digital section found several digital channels and all of them come in beautifully. I can only describe the difference of digital by comparing it to the difference between black & white and color television. The digital television is that good and it does work even better than an HDTV that I also have to review. The reason this card works better is the Hauppauge WinTV includes a fine tuner that the regular HDTV does not so the channels can be fine tuned for even better reception. Simply enter the channel manager and you can fine tune the channels using a slider bar for the best reception.

For an even easier setup you can use the Windows Media Center that will setup and tune your Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 for you with even less hassles. Simply install the PCI card and run Windows Media Center after installing the drivers for the card. Media Center will go through some setup questions and tune the channels for you. It will even fine tune the channels for the best possible reception for digital TV.

The WinTV is a truly easy to use and great way to get digital TV without having to purchase a new and expensive television. You can use the regular antennas that the old analog signal for television uses. I have two antennas that I have been using for years, one I purchased new at a hardware store and another that I bought at a garage sale for a few dollars. I have both set for different station reception and get fairly good analog channels.

The digital stations I receive using WinTV is fantastic and I have not had to do anything to the antennas or my current TV setup. I simply branched off the cable that goes to the TV in my office and used a three way adapter to have two cables go to the back of the WinTv card. The signal for digital is clear and strong and I often watch my favorite shows while doing things for work. The signal comes in very well using these old antennas and there is no need to purchase much additional hardware except a couple of adapters and short coax cables for a few dollars.

The Ulead DVD MovieFactory is also a nice program for editing and creating your own movies and recording them to CD, DVD or a hard drive. The program is easy to use and edit you home videos or recorded TV. The WinTV also includes a handy recorder to record your favorite TV shows or movies and playback at your leisure. The setup will record your shows to your hard drive and you can record them to a DVD using the Ulead DVD MovieFactory. Using the WinTV or Windows Media Center you can set up record times to even record shows while your away or to record shows on a regular basis.

The Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 is a great way to watch and record digital and analog television whether you have antenna, cable or satellite television reception. You can quickly and easily be watching the best quality digital television in literally minutes after installation of the card. This is a great way to get digital TV on your home computer without the cost of a new television. I highly recommend the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 hybrid video recorder.