Hauppauge-WinTV-PVR-350 TV Tuner/Personal Video Recorder

by Hauppauge

Product Details

Product Manual [1.17mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008OOWC
• Item model number: 990
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 26, 2003

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

WinTV-PVR-350 puts TV watching under your control! Watch what you want, when you want. Watch TV on your PC screen, in a window or full screen, digitally record your TV shows to your PCs hard disk, or pause live TV and create your own instant replay. You can even burn your home vidoes or TV shows onto a CD-rom or DVD.

The WinTV-PVR-350 supports data rates up to 12Mbits/sec, so you decide how much hard disk space your videos will consume A typical one hour TV show will take 2 gigbytes of hard disk space. Create your own Digital Video Recorder!

After recording your videos to your PCs hard disk, you can play them back on your TV set with the WinTV-PVR-350's hardware MPEG decoder. The hardware MPEG decoder takes no system resources while playing videos on your TV set, so your computer continues to run at full speed. Note: when playing recorded videos on your PC screen, the WinTV-PVR-350 uses a software decoder, which requires a minimum 500 MHz Pentium.

WinTV-PVR-350 uses a highly integrated MPEG-1/2 encoder, compressing your videos while you watch TV on your PC screen. It also has a built-in hardware MPEG decoder with video output, so you can play back your recorded TV shows or home videos on an external TV set or video monitor.

WinTV-PVR-350 can record live television or video from a VCR or camcorder, using as little as 1 GB of hard disk space per hour. Schedule your TV recordings with WinTV-Scheduler, and then edit them with the WinTV-Editor. With the included Ulead DVD MovieFactory, you can also create Video CD's, S-VCD's or DVD's. Play your recordings on your home DVD player!

WinTV-PVR-350 also includes a hardware MPEG2 decoder and an S-Video output, so you can watch your recorded TV shows or home videos on your large screen video monitor or TV set!

With WinTV-PVR-350 you can:

• Watch TV in a resizeable window (or full screen) on your PC screen. While watching TV, you can surf the net, answer e-mail or do any other PC function.
• Record your home videos or TV shows to disk using high quality MPEG compression. Create MPEG movies at datarates up to 12 MBits per second, or make VCD or SVCD compatible movies. You typically use 2 Gigabytes of hard disk per hour of recorded video.
• Play your recorded TV shows, or your edited home videos, from your PCs hard disk out to a TV set.
• Both SVideo and Composite outputs are included.
• Pause your TV shows with instant replay, fast forward and rewind.
• Schedule your TV recording with WinTV-Scheduler.
• Create MPEG movies with data rates from 1 to 12 MBits/sec.
• Capture high quality still video images from live or recorded video, up to 1600x1200 pixels in BMP, TIF, and JPEG formats.

WinTV-PVR-350 has these great features:

• 125 channel cable ready TV tuner for TV in a window (or full screen), plus composite/s-video and audio inputs to connect to VCR or camcorders. Surf the net while you watch TV on your PC screen!
• Hardware MPEG-2 video and audio encoder, so you only need from 1-2 Gigabytes of disk space per hour of recorded video. While recording, the WinTV-PVRs' hardware MPEG encoder does all the work, so your PC continues to run at full speed!
• Hardware MPEG2 decoder, so you can watch your recorded TV shows, or your edited home videos, on your TV set!
• Turn your home video tapes into MPEG movies, then burn them onto CD or DVD!
• Pause live TV shows with instant replay, fast forward and rewind. Includes new function remote control. dbx-TV stereo decoder (Nicam stereo on PAL models), for great TV sound.
• WinTV-Scheduler, so you can schedule your TV recordings on a daily, weekly or once only schedule.
• WinTV-Editor, so you can cut and trim your videos without losing video quality!
• UleadAE DVD MovieFactory99, so you can author and burn Video CD's, S-VCD's or DVD's. Play them on your home DVD player!

Product Description

Watch and record your TV shows with instant replay and program pause. Burn your favorite TV shows onto CD-ROM or DVD and play them on your home DVD player. Includes hi-performance hardware MPEG2 encoder!brbrThe WinTV-PVR brings live TV to your PC screen. With WinTV-PVRs 125-channel cable ready TV receiver, you can watch TV in a resizeable window or full screen. Or listen to FM radio with our built-in stereo FM receiver. brbrBut thats not all!!brbrWinTV-PVR puts TV watching under your control! Watch what you want, when you want! With WinTV-PVR you can pause TV when you want, create your own instant replay and even burn your TV shows onto CD-ROM!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great piece of hardware, horrible software, October 1, 2004

By 

John P. Reed "jreed0122" (Brentwood, TN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hauppauge-WinTV-PVR-350 TV Tuner/Personal Video Recorder (Personal Computers)

4/28/05 - I have to update this review (from 10/1/04). I have since upgraded to Windows Media Center Edition 2005. This card is great with MCE. There are cheaper Hauppauge cards that also work fine with MCE, so it might be worth taking a look at them before spending the $ on this card. I also wanted to change this review to 5 stars, but Amazon doesn't seem to allow changes to the star rating.

After years of owning various ATI All-In-Wonder video cards, I decided it would be cheaper to go ahead and buy a TV only card, and not have to spend a fortune everytime it was time to upgrade my video card. Quick and to the point, here are my findings :

Negatives :
1. The 'web based' program guide is a very clumsy interface. I would much rather have a application based program guide.
2. No matter what I try, channel 2 always has ghosting. I know it's the card because I had the same cable plugged into my ATI AIW with no problems, and also plugged it into a TV with no picture problems. Maybe moving the card further away from the video card will help?
3. While I'm sure there is a way, I have yet to find how to change the recording quality. After fumbling through the software I finally gave up.

Positives :
1. The FM Radio program is pretty slick, and the reception is ok. No complaints.
2. Unlike the ATI AIW cards (and probably the TV Wonder's) you can set the program to automatically mute while recordinging and close the application when it's done recording. You still have to go back into the scheduler and modify EACH individual scheduled task. It would be nice to either highlight all and change them all at once, OR set a default for all new recordings.
3. Hardware based TV OUT is nice.
4. PLENTY of 3'rd party software supports this card. This is a big plus since in my opinion the software that comes with the card is lacking.

I would have gave this card 5 stars if the bundled software was better. Plan on purchasing SageTV or similar if you plan on buying this card.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not for everyone, August 30, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Hauppauge-WinTV-PVR-350 TV Tuner/Personal Video Recorder (Personal Computers)

The card does work as expected but I cannot recommend it for current Hauppauge customers. Read the FAQ on the Hauppauge web page before purchase. I had to disable my current Hauppauge TV card before installing this PCR card. This is the primary problem with card for me.

A secondary issue is that my TV and computer are very close together and on at the same time. This was fine with the original TV card but with the PVR-350 card there is a delay causing an echo effect with the sound, so either my TV or the PVR-350 must be muted.

The only real Bug I have found is if you are using the PVR-350 in Pause or REC mode when a scheduled program starts. The scheduled program kicks you of your current mode and starts recording. However, this card does not currently allow you to change channels while in Pause or REC mode, so your scheduled record will record what you were watching but not what was scheduled! The channel indicator does show what was scheduled but it does not match the screen unless by luck you were watching the same channel as was scheduled.

The final irritation for me is use of remote while in Pause mode. If you hit the skip 10 seconds button too fast the signal appears to be misread and it kicks you out of Pause with loss of data! This has never occured when I use the computer controls.
BTW: No information such as channel number or menu is shown on your primary TV. This limits the use of the remote.

I would highly recommend this card if your first TV card and primary use will be at the computer.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works great with MythTV, March 2, 2006

By 

Wayne Bonnett "Photographer, Music and Comput... (Louisville, KY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hauppauge-WinTV-PVR-350 TV Tuner/Personal Video Recorder (Personal Computers)

I purchased this card because I was building a MythTV box. So far, I have nothing but good things to say about this card.