Review: Hauppauge WinTV Nova-TD USB Digital TV and Radio Tuner

Don Bradbury gives this neat little twin tuner device a try out on a Vista PC

Product	WinTV Nova-TD USB Digital Tuner
Company	Hauppauge
Web	www.hauppauge.co.uk
Price	£72
We like	Comprehensive setup; decent picture; good EPG
We don't like	Some lockups while adjusting; lack of response to full screen command on occasions.
Rating	7/10
Requirements

Hauppauge have been making television tuners for the PC for several years now and have established something of a reputation. While USB TV tuners come in many guises, the Nova-TD is specifically geared toward those who demand the facility to watch one channel while recording a second, and adding the PVR (Personal Video Recorder) function means the PC user can now compete with the rest of the TV-watching household by popping recordings of their chosen shows to a hard drive without upsetting the family.

Installation of the WinTV Nova-TD and its software may appear a little daunting, not least because of the particular layout of the instruction sheet. However, it's all pretty straight forward; you just put the tuner stick in a free USB 2.0 port (via the provided twelve inch extension cable if necessary), and attach the aerial lead which, for tuning, should ideally be to a digital roof top aerial to ensure all stations are (rather slowly) detected. Then wait for Windows to detect the device, load the CD into your drive and let the software install automatically. The advice was to disable any anti-virus software first. We didn't, and installation proceeded to completion without a hitch, but presumably you might have to if you encounter complaints from your computer.

This device lets you select from the entire range of Freeview digital TV channels, plus a stack of radio stations, and the television can usually be watched in full screen mode with no visible loss of lip-synch. We say "usually" because, on occasions, nothing happened when Ctrl-T was pressed for full screen mode. You can record programs using an EPG (Electronic Program Guide), plus we noticed during installation an offer of a different EPG with a free trial period. Presumably this was to upgrade but there were no details on offer.

Options

Installation options included start at bootup, start minimized, "record ahead" by a default of 5 minutes, and "record longer" which was also set at 5 minutes as delivered, but both can be reset to your preference. Password application to both the EPG and System Account for Recording, should you need them, are also on offer.

After the preliminary station scan, you'll likely discover that the channel order is not the same as you're familiar with on the family TV. With so many channels on offer, it's a bit of a job to reallocate them, but the option is there by simply moving them up or down in the channel manager.

Record start, stop, pause, freeze frame, and replay fast or slow motion, replay skip ahead, rewind, and in fact most of the "usual suspects" were there. The provided remote control was a worthy beast, feeling solid, responsive, comprehensive, and well labelled. Two batteries to power the WinTV Nova-TD were provided.

Always-on-top was an option, should you not want work to interfere with watching TV, and shortcut keystrokes made light work of shifting around and selecting options. Preferences were quite comprehensive, and the menus offered what most would expect to find in them.

Picture quality

The picture on view did reasonable justice to a modern PC display. The graphic below shows a typical small, discrete image, but, as we said, it can usually be enlarged to take over the entire screen if you want. The aspect ratio can be adjusted, and with most modern films and programs being suitable for widescreen displays, watching TV on a desktop or laptop PC was usable.

You might find you need to play around for a while with programming of the EPG. And if you want to press Media Centre into service, you're advised to use the MCE remote control that came with your MCE PC; the Hauppauge remote can be used but it's not Media Centre certified, so certain functions will not be available, such as the green start button. But at least you can successfully navigate in the Media Centre app itself. At 1024 x 576 default resolution we got MPEG2 file sizes amounting to 1 to 2GB in an hour of recording, so this is a job for a high capacity hard drive if you're to accumulate a decent number of video clips.

A roof-top aerial will be permanently preferred in low signal strength areas such as you'll often find with relay transmitters, but Hauppauge have added their Diversity Technology, and twin aerials to implement it, so that's worth a try if you're favoured with decent signal strength. We got no picture at all using this technology, but that's the way with digital, the picture is either all or nothing.

Sound in stereo was good - through headphones for preference if you're using a laptop - and apart from some frame freezing during high res playback, the picture quality is good, too, provided you can bring to bear a 1.7GHz or faster CPU. Play around with resolution and other options to optimise this to your needs.

In conclusion

There's no mention of OS compatibility beyond XP for the WinTV Nova-TD, but it appeared to install satisfactorily on a Vista Home Premium computer, and this has the advantage of bringing Media Center to bear if you choose to use it. We did, though, note the need to reboot occasionally after getting a "no response" message after loading either of the two viewers on offer, and we were not able to tie this down to any particular facet of either hardware or software.

The applications supplied were generally up to the job, and while we found - and have come to expect - one or two lockups while we learned how to use the tuner, it otherwise ran reasonably well. So, comprehensive user options and preferences, easy installation, if made unnecessarily daunting by the instruction sheet layout, but all in all a neat little birthday present for someone.

We have Hauppauge's latest TV tuner offering in for review, based on ExpressCard technology. It's looking good, so you might want to wait for that review if a TV tuner for the PC is on your buying list. That's provided, of course, that you can bring an ExpressCard slot into service.

 

 

Don Bradbury