Packaging:
The box shows a picture of the card with the included IR remote.
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| Box Front | Box Back |
Inside we can see the card packaged in its anti-static bag along with the remote and IR receiver.
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| Inside | Package Contents |
A Closer Look:
The HVR-1800 is a TV tuner card. This means that is will allow you to watch and capture TV shows right to your computer. MythTV support for the card seems to work, but may require some extra configuration and an updated kernel. In our testing we found the included WinTV software to be a bit lackluster in the feature department. You will have a lot more luck if you use the built in Windows Media Center that comes with either Vista or Windows 7. Windows Media Center will allow you to program schedules for your tuner to record along with enable time shifting on live TV.
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| Front | Back |
One feature this card holds above some of the other ones on the market, is the built in FM tuner. You can use time shifting on radio and also record segments for future playback.
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| Front Panel Inputs |
The over the air HD tuner on the card works quite well. You will need a separate antenna in order to get acceptable reception. You may need a high gain antenna, depending on your area. Not all areas have over the air HD either. You will need to find out if your area does first.
Wow, this is the most worthless review ever. No commentary on picture quality, tuner quality, bundled software, etc. You basically said “it’s a TV tuner, it fits in a PCI-E x1 slot, and it comes in a box.”
This is not a review. It’s about half the pages of an installation manual. Worthless. I won’t read anything at techwarelabs again unless I need a good laugh.