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Finland, Helsinki
1 Level
750 Review
43 Karma

Review on πŸ“Ί Enhance Your TV Experience with the Hauppauge WinTV-quadHD PCI Express TV Tuner Card 1609 by Ryan Vaughn

Revainrating 3 out of 5

All I can say is it's ok. Missing features and not everything works as expected

So I just fired this thing up. Don't let the name fool you: there are HD channels, but not all. I don't use an antenna. I use Clear QAM at my cable company. No, they don't support this setup (because it's basically free cable in every room of the house without having to pay extra for your hardware). Service and picked up the device but what they didn't do was turn off the QAM signal. That's when people figured out how to connect the coax cable directly to the TV, and thus got a spare cable: So the cable company won't support that setup.] [I wouldn't even call the cable company to see if they use QAM, it is more than likely they won't admit it if they do and they will try to get you to rent their gear to do it. The only way to know if they're using QAM is to just plug it in and see what happens.] Observations: 1. The remote control is pretty useless - slow response if any, and jerky response when pressing a button Regarding no Repeated beeps key presses. So if I turn down the volume and hold the button down it only decreases 5%, I have to press the button again to decrease it another 5%.2. HD Channels - Yes some but as I pay my cable provider for HD service they only receive about 6 HD channels and NONE of the other "digital" channels are received in HD except for say 2 or 3.3. I also bought a "Favormates" remote which is an air mouse similar to the Wii controller except it doesn't work as well as the Wii controller. But it controls the volume better than the remote that came with that TV tuner card (it's an RF-based control, not an IR-based one). It also changes channels, except it cannot work with 5-digit channels. Even the remote control that came with this card doesn't work, except for the volume and playback functions. The remote control that comes with this card can't change channels at all except up and down buttons.4. The card itself works for both ATSC and QAM channel detection, the setup wizard is quite simple and straightforward. I'm using it on Windows 10 Enterprise 1607 and haven't had any problems. The WinTV V8.5 software is nothing special. It doesn't have a built-in TV guide that requires mouse input (or in my case the Favormates controller, which doesn't work very well for mouse control anyway, so I have to use the mouse anyway). All I can say about the card itself is that it works. For $86 I was expecting better and/or working functionality. I think this card is overpriced for what you get and what works and what doesn't. If there had been accurate full reviews of this product I would not have bought it but I did. you live you learn I hope others don't make the same mistake I did by overpaying for this card.

Pros
  • GOLS certified
Cons
  • Only available in black