That'll teach me
It's my own fault - too impatient, and let the urge to impulse buy get the better of me...
Yup, I went and bought one of these. In Dixons, and costing far more than it would have if I'd waited and bought it from Amazon (and no doubt even cheaper elsewhere). And it sucks.
Now this was after this discussion which had already involved me doing some research, and immediately spotting that several people, including munchkinott, had less than favourable opinions of Hauppauge devices. Did that stop me? Did it heck - couldn't wait to get my hands on a TV tuner type gadget, and couldn't be bothered to at least get in my car and go to PC World, where if nothing else, there would have been a choice. Nope, barely 5 mins walk away, and about the only vaguely electronics store open - they must have seen me coming. :-(
So what's wrong with it? Well, mainly this:
"WinTV-USB offers features usually only seen on high-end television sets, like previewing 16 channels at once. And it goes further! Record your TV shows to your PC or laptops disk using MPEG encoding with our SoftPVR™. Record video movies from your camcorder or off the air. And with WinTV-SnapShot, snap and print video images from whatever you're watching in high resolution up to 1600x1200 pixels!"
It makes several comments like this about giving high quality/high resolution/high performance and at full screen, and I'm sorry, but not to my eyes it aint.
In the default squinty size the picture is just about passable, but I can still see quite a few irritating problems, especially with the backgrounds, and the picture is noticeably fuzzy. Full screen is unbearably bad. And as for playing back anything that I record - well, yuck! Which leads to a question: I understand about the picture/sound deterioraton when recording on videotape, but I assumed that it should be negligable with digital video - clearly I'm wrong... Why?
I'm also noticing some problems with the sound... it's apparently stuck in mono only on all channels, and also some channels have an underlying hiss (although I suppose that could be from the antenna, and maybe I'm only noticing because I'm now listening through headphones). And I've got problems with some of the other features too...
My PC is new and reasonably meaty, deliberately bought with the intention of using it to play with all sorts of video images - specifically to convert my tapes to DVD... I've used it so far to play DVDs, VCDs, and even some downloaded music vids, with few obvious problems even at full-screen, so I'm particularly disappointed that this is so noticeable even at squinty size.
And just for comparison, I have my little portable 13" TV on across the room now running off the satellite feed only, and the TV is way clearer. BBC2 has now switched to its late night Ceefax mode... mostly illegible in squinty, and all blurred with a wavy effect in full-screen - like it's underwater! Grr!
Oh well, lesson learned - mustn't do that again in a hurry.
ETA: Oh yes, about d/ling latest drivers... it's a bit disconcerting when the latest versions were uploaded at various dates in 2001-2003. And also, I'm having trouble identifying the versions of the ones I've already got installed.... :-(
Also, from one of the FAQs: NOTE: The WinTV USB provides MONO audio only. That's all very well, but the instructions, which are specific to this model, clearly show stereo in the picture!
And.... AMD processors may require the USB update from Microsoft. Also, be sure that the Processor supports MMX technology. if it does not, it will not be compatible. Um...
Yup, I went and bought one of these. In Dixons, and costing far more than it would have if I'd waited and bought it from Amazon (and no doubt even cheaper elsewhere). And it sucks.
Now this was after this discussion which had already involved me doing some research, and immediately spotting that several people, including munchkinott, had less than favourable opinions of Hauppauge devices. Did that stop me? Did it heck - couldn't wait to get my hands on a TV tuner type gadget, and couldn't be bothered to at least get in my car and go to PC World, where if nothing else, there would have been a choice. Nope, barely 5 mins walk away, and about the only vaguely electronics store open - they must have seen me coming. :-(
So what's wrong with it? Well, mainly this:
"WinTV-USB offers features usually only seen on high-end television sets, like previewing 16 channels at once. And it goes further! Record your TV shows to your PC or laptops disk using MPEG encoding with our SoftPVR™. Record video movies from your camcorder or off the air. And with WinTV-SnapShot, snap and print video images from whatever you're watching in high resolution up to 1600x1200 pixels!"
It makes several comments like this about giving high quality/high resolution/high performance and at full screen, and I'm sorry, but not to my eyes it aint.
In the default squinty size the picture is just about passable, but I can still see quite a few irritating problems, especially with the backgrounds, and the picture is noticeably fuzzy. Full screen is unbearably bad. And as for playing back anything that I record - well, yuck! Which leads to a question: I understand about the picture/sound deterioraton when recording on videotape, but I assumed that it should be negligable with digital video - clearly I'm wrong... Why?
I'm also noticing some problems with the sound... it's apparently stuck in mono only on all channels, and also some channels have an underlying hiss (although I suppose that could be from the antenna, and maybe I'm only noticing because I'm now listening through headphones). And I've got problems with some of the other features too...
My PC is new and reasonably meaty, deliberately bought with the intention of using it to play with all sorts of video images - specifically to convert my tapes to DVD... I've used it so far to play DVDs, VCDs, and even some downloaded music vids, with few obvious problems even at full-screen, so I'm particularly disappointed that this is so noticeable even at squinty size.
And just for comparison, I have my little portable 13" TV on across the room now running off the satellite feed only, and the TV is way clearer. BBC2 has now switched to its late night Ceefax mode... mostly illegible in squinty, and all blurred with a wavy effect in full-screen - like it's underwater! Grr!
Oh well, lesson learned - mustn't do that again in a hurry.
ETA: Oh yes, about d/ling latest drivers... it's a bit disconcerting when the latest versions were uploaded at various dates in 2001-2003. And also, I'm having trouble identifying the versions of the ones I've already got installed.... :-(
Also, from one of the FAQs: NOTE: The WinTV USB provides MONO audio only. That's all very well, but the instructions, which are specific to this model, clearly show stereo in the picture!
And.... AMD processors may require the USB update from Microsoft. Also, be sure that the Processor supports MMX technology. if it does not, it will not be compatible. Um...