Hardware Hauppauge WinTV HVR-4400 review

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/10/15/hauppauge-wintv-hvr-4400-review/1

 

Important: this card will only be able to receive HD channels via the satellite (DVB-S2) input. The terrestrial freeview (DVB-T) input will only receive SD broadcasts.

 

I'll be sticking with Sky+HD, thanks. It's so easy that a baby could do it.

Also, I (We) signed up to sky about 10 years ago, and we're still on the same package now- We pay about £30 a month and get everything bar sports and movies. I even get the F1 channel.

I can't see any sort of advantage to this sort of device.

 

edzieba, That was the exact comment I was going to highlight. Meaning that even if you have BOTH a digital aerial and a satellite dish you won't be able to record one HD channel and watch another, you will only be able to watch SD channels. This has been my issue with TV cards for years. Before HD came along you usually could only get one digital tuner and another analogue one. I want TV cards to offer fully featured DUAL TUNERS so I am not limited in my viewing options even if I choose to record something.

 

I've been looking at getting a TV tuner for my system for a while. I never seem to find one that fits my exact needs though. The one I have been looking at for a while is the BlackGold BGT3600. A Dual DVB-S2 and Dual DVB-T2 all in one. Looks like scan have them for £165, which seems reasonable.

 

Be careful re BlackGold TV cards

I have one and when it works it is great but it has an incompatibility problem with MCE which cannot be resolved unless MCE gets an upgrade which looks unlikely. There is supposed to be a workaround to stop it dropping sat channels but I have not been able to make it work properly

Try the Hauppage S350 which has a dual sat tuner. I have found it to be excellent

 

Not quite sure how this card scored so highly in "Value", especially considering:

I've been baffled by dual freeview/freesat cards for a while now. If you've made the investment in freesat equipment, surely you're going to want to use that. If you only have freeview, then the freesat tuner is useless.

Just give me a card with dual HD freeview or dual HD freesat tuners. I know they can cut costs by including both on one card, but honestly how many average people have that capability?

For me this card would be a £120-odd paperweight. I only have freeview (by choice - I could easily afford Sky or Freesat but I refuse to pay for either) and I already have dual tuners.

 

Putting the money towards a youview box would seem like a more sensible option

 

is there still a market for these things? I thought everyone is using full HD streams from all over the world via internet. or stick a Ci module into their TV from their provider or download all their favo series from 'other' sources.

 

Great review, please review more tuner cards as they are released. I currently have 4x digital freeview tuners (1x WinTV-NOVA-TD Stick, 1x Kworld Dual Tuner PE355-2T). These both work perfectly with WMC, but I have been looking for a while to upgrade to freeview/freesat HD. Unfortunaltely I've not come across anything decent so far but it looks like more manufacturers are finally starting to make the move over to HD now!

Everyone always seems to think streaming is the answer but
a. you have to wait until after a programme has been broadcast before it comes online
b. they're only available for a limited time (I have TV recordings from 2010 that I still need to get round to watching!)
c. it's usually lower quality than broadcast TV
d. It's never as simple as it's supposed to be

Don't get me wrong, I regularly use iplayer etc. as a backup, and until I get an HD tuner I have to get HD content online (or via blu-ray), but I am not getting rid of my TV tuners any time soon!

 

Agreed, we need to get more reviews of tuners for HTPC builds, there seems to be very few decent reviews around and not all of us want the simple and limited functionality of the ready made solutions.

 

Oh wow, I actually went "TV's are SO 90's" when I saw the review on the front page...

The last time I gave a damn about broadcast TV was back when VHS was still the recording media of choice, I just don't see the draw with commercials every 10 minutes, programs airing at the wrong time - and generally being shite / three years after the original air date - or you'll have to pay extra for the pay channels.

ugh. Yeah thanks for the review...

 

I've got the Kworld dual tuner pci-e DVB-T, but not tried a T2 tuner - what stopped me from buying one is that I started to use web services like iPlayer more and more, and I use get_iplayer (on both windows and Ubuntu) to download and watch off-line.

So I haven't used WMC for ages - would be very interested in seeing DVB-T2 tuner reviews, especially the BlackGold series...

 

You don't think being able to watch freeview/freesat television in a room with only a PC could be an advantage to someone?

 

Thought this had been around for a while now?

 

I've got Sky+HD at the moment- it's a good service, but the boxes seem terrible and they break fairly regularly.

 

Picking up on this, if your TV and PC are in different rooms then you can effectively turn your 24" monitor into a second TV by using one of these. Of course there's iPlayer, but for watching ITV, Channel 4 and C5 live (without the need to register in C4's case) then TV Tuner's come in very handy.

Sure it's a niche market, but TV Tuner's have been around for ages, so the hardware and software are very mature now.

 

XBMC + Dreambox wins

 

second that. blackgold and TBS www tbsdtv com all have Freeview HD and Freesat HD cards available.

 

BBC HD , ITV 1 HD , Channel 4 HD and BBC 1 HD are "Freesat"?
As in, i lift my dish to the sky and they come? Or do I need a decoder?

How HD is this HD? 240? 720? 1080?

Most countries are pretty tight when it comes to actual streaming...also Full HD streams? really? I'm happy if I get 360 lag-free That's barely Youtube level.

Edit: Just checked, Lovefilm for instance stream by Silverlight...and uses NO buffering.
Why? Why not?

That actually works best for high qualitys, but is pretty much illegal