HAUPPAUGE WINTV USB 2 19/11/2004

Hauppauge WinTV USB 2

The Hauppauge WinTV USB 2 (£70 inc. VAT) is the largest of the three units on test and consists of an external unit with the USB cable fixed into the housing of the unit. In this way, it will not suffer same accidental fate as befell the Terratec unit, which fell out during use. That said, the main unit is three-times larger than the Terratec unit but is still semi-portable. The USB port slots directly into the laptop and with sockets for aerial, S-video and audio, in and out, it can be readily set up to a surround-sound system.

The drivers for the unit come supplied on CD-ROM but as there is no Install Wizard, first-time users ay be a little unsure of how best to install the device. This is not helped by the less than thorough paper instructions. However, once installed, we found that the interface for the WinTV was the most straightforward and adaptable of the three here.

As soon as the program was launched, it asked whether it should check for relevant channels. The Hauppauge software was the only one to do this, making channel selection a great deal easier. Images can be readily shown at full screen size but this has a direct effect on image quality. As with the two other tuners on test, the picture quality is only as strong as the aerial used but we found that the fine tuning of signals made the Hauppauge easy to use.

PVR functions are also present and come in the form of the SoftPVR application. A panel on the left-hand side allows for the user to specify the size of the image, up to a maximum of 1600 x 1200 pixels. However, this will have a direct impact on the final file size and users will find that the average hard drive will soon grow full.

The Hauppauge WinTV USB 2 may not initially appear to be the easiest unit to set up but once the software was installed, we found it offered the best channel surfing experience of the three.

RATING: 8
PRICE: £59/£70 (ex/inc. VAT)
Contact:
www.hauppauge.com  

The Hauppauge WinTV USB 2 can be found in the latest issue of WL, where it featured in a group test of TV tuners.