Hauppauge WinTV Go PCI TV Tuner Card with stereo sound

That's all it does, but it does it better than many of those other cards out there. For a start it beats most of the cheap, tacky bundled software that comes with other cards, and ét's a very common sight when a great TV card is let down by its software. The main TV viewer application is very stable, fast, with a nice complete user interface. You get all the features you'd expect such as a channel editor, video capture to file, still image capture, freeze-frame, 16-channel grid where you can see what's going on in all channels at the same time and pick the one you like, color/audio customisation and full screen viewing. Practical hotkeys allow you to zap through channels and change volume levels with your keyboard.

The card itself supports all the major graphics cards, so you shouldn't have any trouble getting it to work with your graphics adapter.

Installation is a breeze, and it's probably one of the first to work on Windows 2000 too, without any problems.

The only reason I'm giving it 4 stars is the lack of a Windows Background feature, where the TV image replaces your Windows background, which I think is cool but I can live without it. Also, the one time I tried to uninstall it after messing up my configuration, subsequent reinstallation was impossible, because it still refused to work despite using Hauppauge's various uninstallation and registry cleaning utilities and instructions. Support was responsive and helpful however, but we never managed to solve the reinstallation problem. I eventually ended up reinstalling the Operating System, so they need to work on the uninstallation a bit.

All in all, it's difficult to find a TV card at this price, and when you do, it probably doesn't reach WinTV GO's quality of hardware and software. It doesn't have a ton of added features but it does what it claims to do and it does it well. Its TV picture quality is probably hard to beat even with expensive TV viewers. Great value for money if all you need is to watch TV on your PC.

I would recommend at least a Voodoo3 running in the computer, as my previous card couldn't handle WinTV full screen. A graphics card supporting Overlay is also recommended, as this avoids un-necessary flicker.

Installation was extremely simple, the only niggles I had, were the length of the sound cable. This didn't reach from the TV card to the soundcard, and had to move some PCI cards around to fix this. The card also didn't quite fit flush with the back panel of the PC.

The drivers supplied on the CD aren't particularly stable, I highly recommend Hauppauge's instructions in the box and downloading the latest drivers, as I got many a blue screen. The WinTV software itself is extremely comprehensive, but doesn't support time-shift recording.

Image quality is very good, but the quality slips when you go full screen.

This is highly recommended to a TV card buyer on a budget.

I am only averagely competent with computers and a bit of a technophobe when it comes to actually opening up the computer and installing new hardware, but I did this myself - and it was really easy and I am quite proud of myself!

I dont know why more people dont use a tv card, its great for us. Our computer is in our back room/ kitchen and we would not have any room here for a tv, but now the computer doubles as a tv which is really useful.

Even I can install it, no problems at all, (we have had it a couple of years) excellent, dont know why PC's dont come like this as standard, if you have a montitor taking up space in your house it might as well be a tv as well.