Customer Reviews

Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T USB Stick - DVB-T Digital freeview TV tuner stick

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I purchased this as i wanted to record freeview programs, as my PC is relativly new I did not want to break the warrenty seals to install an onboard card.
I have to admit that I have this linked to a full size antenna situated within my loft space. I decided to use WMC to control the device so have not installed the win TV softwear so far it has provided prfect picture and sound quality and along with the WMC tv softwear and EPG fullfils all of my requierments.

The truth is that if your buying a digital TV card (freeveiw), that the cards themselves have little influence on the overall quality of the TV you will watch. All the cards can pick up the same stations (E4, BBC news 24, Kerrang etc... whether its your 70£ terratec all singing all dancing ,or your cheap little USB Hauppauge stick. The thing which will influence the sigmal is your aerial. So my advice for those of you buying for the sole puurpose of veiwing digital TV on your comp at home and maybe recording the odd show is to buy a cheap USB stick and spend the bulk of your money on a reasonable indoor aerial and purchase a signal booster with it (20£), and foreget using a PCI board with dual tuner blah blah... because its little advantage for the extra money.

The funny thing about digital is that unlike analogue you ither have signal or you don't, no fuzy picture, either crystal clear or blank screen so reception is very important.

The reason for 4 star rather than 5 is that the software included (Win TV) sucks soooooo much and theres not many other softwares availible (most are beta editions.)

To conclude; this stick will serve the purpose of recieving digital TV through a good aerial (supplied aerial is v.weak and only usefull in strong signal area or outdoors.)

Initially I gave this a 1 star rating, since it hung my system (XP) whenever I tried to install it. I have since discovered that the Nvidia graphics card drivers I had were causing the freeze - which also affected AVI files. I upgraded to the latest drivers from Nvidia's site and now everything works fine. It picked up all 64 channels through a shared coaxial cable and displays them without glitches. It records happily enough on a 2.4 Athlon, though it's best to keep the number of background processes running to a minimum. Playback quality is above VHS - around what you'd expect from XLP DVD (6 hrs per disk) and it uses around 2GB per hour of recording. I've put it through an HDMI socket in the TV via a DVi to HDMI converter which keeps a scart free. Overall, it's a cheap way of watching TV and if you have an old PC, buying a 200GB hard disk for £50 will give you a 100 hour digital video recorder for peanuts...

The reason I bought this was because I wanted to watch television on my computer. I was undiecided wheather to buy a new pc monitor or flat screen T.V. with integrated freeview and a PC input, but in the end opted for the 22 inch monitor with an HDMI port.

After reading a few reviews, I choose the Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T USB Stick. Once the package arrived I opened it and took out the instructions, (it unfolds like a map) and installed the T.V. stick and software. It took several minutes before I received a picture after rebooting it, but it soon appeared. I received 44 radio and television stations after scanning. Picture quality is good considering I'm using the supplied aerial and had to reposition it several times before I got a steady picture, however, a roof aerial might recieve a stronger signal in some areas. I found by setting it on top of a metalic object improves the image slightly. A T.V. show or film can be recorded to the computer's hard disk and viewed at a later date.

In order for product to be installed you're must have a free USB 2 port and Windows Vista or XP with service pack 2. It comes with the Win T.V. stick, a USB 2 extension cable, antenna, CD rom and installation sheet.

With my 22 inch monitor it is possible to have 2 applications on the screen at the same time i.e. browse the internet and watch T.V. etc. If you want digital television on your computer, then the Hauppauge WinTV stick will provide that. Works well for me.

Got this today and it worked fine straight out of the box. I am running it on a small internal aerial and it works perfectly. It doesn't even matter which way I point it.

software is ok as well.

This usb freeview dvb-t receiver works well with my
ubuntu/linux mythtv distribution (kernel version 2.6.31-21).

I tested it first with my windows xp distribution
and then plugged it into my linux box.

It picks up as many channels as my normal tv channels, and works well.

Delivery was a little slow, but since this doesn't affect the product itself
I haven't downgraded it to 4 stars.

I may buy another one to give my mythtv box an extra tuner.

It was with some trepidation that after much research and reading many reviews I opted for this tuner stick. But all my concerns were unfounded!

Connected to an external aerial you open Media Centre. When prompted install the Nova-T Drivers from the CD and when this is complete use Media Centre to scan for the Freeview programmes. I live 10 miles from the Crystal Palace transmitter and accessed 75 services with excellent pictures and sound. I didn't try to get the remote to work with Media Centre but you can access the programmes list from MC (looks very much like Sky's planner). I also use the numeric pad on my keyboard to access Channels.

I think TV on the move may be asking a little much of this tuner but used with an external aerial and MC it's a superb little gadget and at the newly reduced price surely a best buy.

My new computer running Vista did not have a tv tuner so I bought one of these. Irritatingly the installation CD was not in the box, but I was easily able to download it from the Hauppauge site.
I followed the advice of previous reviewers (thanks a lot) and connected it to our house aerial and did not bother installing the WinTV software, but use it with Media Centre in Vista.
I am new to Vista, and frankly, people, I am amazed. Setup was a breeze, picking up 80 odd chanels, and the picture quality is fabulous, equalling anything on our regular TV. Although we had a video recorder for years, I could never be bothered to use it, but Media Centre is intuitive to use, and recording a program or a whole series is just a click away. Couldn't be more pleased.

We live just below the brow of a hill, and the transmitter is many miles away on the other side, with the result that although our rooftop aerial picks up a signal, neither the Hauppage-supplied nor another better aerial will pick up any signal.
To be exact, the stick will detect the local stations and their frequencies, but it hasn't got enough of a signal to play any of them.

Why not plug it into the house aerial socket? Well, I have, and it works then, but I bought this for portability and convenience,not for being tethered.

The software has some strange HCI concepts. For instance, the channel list is off on a sideshoot menu, and when you do have a picture on the screen, there's no signal quality bar beside it, and neither can you double click on a sidebar list of stations to bring up the one you want. I feel that if Mr or Ms Hauppauge had thought a little more about how the user wanted to use the software, it would have been nice.

Having tried Pinnacle's dvb-t stick on my laptop, which failed miserably (erasing the drivers for my DVD drive), I returned it and replaced it with this. In constrast to the Pinnacle stick, this is genuinely vista compatible. I plugged it in, and had the drivers working within a very short space of time. After the troubles with Pinnacle, I didn't bother with the bundled software, but instead installed the stick in Windows Media Centre. This took around 15 minutes to complete, after which I was able to receive 70 channels. Picture quality is excellent, with none of the crashing that others have experienced. Overall, one very satisfied customer.