Hauppauge WinTV HVR 1100/Hybrid analogue and digital PCI card

I have been using this card for just over a week now, and have the following comments to offer.

I have it in a fairly high spec machine (3.2ghz, 1GB ram, fast hard disks). I am connected to a fairly old roof mounted aerial via a very long (25m) rf lead running through the house. I live in central london, with a decent digital signal, and strong analogue, albeit with some ghosting due to buildings.

On installing the card (with latest drivers off the website), I immediately hit slight problems with errors in the installation, although the errors didn't actually seem to affect the operation of the program.

I have found the quality of the reception of digital channels to be excellent, with a nice picture and good audio. However, quality of analogue reception is frankly poor. Compared with the very old low end Pinnacle card which it replaced, I would say that the treatment of the analogue signal left a picture of about 30% the quality I had before on the same aerial setup.

I found that connecting a cheap booster box from Argos increased the number of digital signals I could recieve significantly, but did not improve the analogue signal.

The software supplied with the card is frankly buggy, and more than a little ugly. I have had numerous crashes with it, and experienced many silly glitches. (Aproximately 30% of the uses i make of it result in a crash of some sort). It feels more like beta software. I recommend instead using software such as Cyberlink's PowerCinema, which is better designed.

In summary then: this card provides excellent digital reception, even on a supposedly non-digital outdoor aerial (no need to spend £120 on an upgrade to that). This is at the expense of poor analogue reception and mediocre supplied software.

I'll start with a rundown of the product contents/features:
1xPCI Board with:
Freeview Tuner, Analogue Tuner, FM Radio Tuner (2x Aerial inputs - FM and TV)
1xComposite Input, 1xS-Video input, 1xAudio in jack (3.5mm stereo)
Comes with IR remote, IR reciever and FM aerial

It uses Hauppauge's WinTV2000 software which allows you to pause Live TV and record to a file (MPEG2). You also get Now & Next info instead of an EPG. TV can be shown in a window or full screen. The software can run in the background while you surf or work on office documents. (Recording should not be done whilst other applications are running)

As well as that I connected my Sky Digibox via the composite input and 3.5mm Audio jack and was surprised by the picture and audio quality. I can now also record from the Digibox directly to a file on my PC which can be used to make a DVD at a later date.

I have been looking for something to connect my digibox to so i could watch it on my computer for some time. When i found this it was like TV overload. Installation was easy, Freeview channel scan is automatic and takes a couple of minutes. Your composite input is assigned a number like your other channels so you can flick easily between freeview, analogue and sky digibox. The FM Radio is tuned easily because you just type in the frequency and it finds it. Simple.

All in all a great product, as the title says... Worth every penny.

I am currently running a pc with vista Home Premium, I had a previous bad experience with a Dazzle USB D-TV stick...dont buy it, it doesn't like vista, and took over 3 hours to clear it out the registry.(it does not uninstall!!!)
I bought the Hauppauge card as there are a number of good reviews online, the advice that I picked up was this....
connect up the device, turn on the computer.
DO NOT instal any of Hauppauge software at this stage, windows has the drivers preinstalled.
Thats it...go into media centre, set up the tv.
The remote that it comes with will work most of the media centre functions, open up the files in the installation cd, and find the file IR32.exe this will install the software for the remote to work media centre.
It was as easy as that, I couldn't recoment this product enough.

...although the box stated HVR1100, the chip on the card read HVR1110...I believe that this is the updated model.

As of the end of May 2007, the XP drivers have been sorted... I have over 50 channels available and I'm not even in a supported digital area (peak district)... good picture, although a little blurred at 1920x1200... but I expected that. everything works as it should. You will need a digital enabled aerial though.

good freeview tv card, easy to set up and works great, remote a good size and quality, feels like a proper tv remote, use the latest software from there website as software that came with card not to good, so get the latest update software, easy to download from there website, but card does work great.
I had bought this card 8 months, with no problems

Got this for the computer and a 500gb hard drive, its great good quality recorded digital TV. no image or sound quality issues. The only gripe which can be lived with is the epg service, which works but is not integrated with the TV viewing package. And a slight pause when switching channels.

As others suggested, the bundled software is really slow on changing channels, even on my quad core 4GB ram system. It is to do with the software itself. Windows Vista users can use the build in Media centre software instead.
BUT it will only choose between Analogue or Digital tuning, NOT BOTH.
To change between the two, you need a rescan/setup.

This makes having a hybrid A/D tuner a bit pointless.

Bottom line, picture quality is as good as any TV card but I suggest the digital only versions instead.