Review: Hauppauge WinTV Nova-t USB tuner

Don Bradbury looks at a nifty digital TV tuner to run on your PC

Product	WinTV Nova-t USB tuner
Company	Hauppauge
Web	www.hauppauge.co.uk
Price	£200
We like	The video quality and recording facility
We don't like	Rather high price
Rating	8/10
Requirements

It may make sense to press your expensive computer monitor into service as a second (or third) TV display in the home. It's got all you need by way of display capability, and lacks only the tuner circuitry. Hauppauge, among others, make such devices, and recent ones can handle all the free-to-air channels, too, some of which not even your TV set may be equipped to receive.

In the past, the problem for these devices has been computing power - an insufficiency thereof, to be precise. I tried this latest unit on a 1GHz Pentium III with 256MB of RAM and an nVidia GeForce2 MX video card, and was very pleased with the superb quality of both picture and sound. Unlike previous tuner gear I've tried, with this lot in tow there was no detectable loss of lip-synch whatsoever, and the Hauppauge software made easy work of both setup and replay of saved recordings. Oh yes, you can record broadcasts directly to hard disk, and quite compactly, too!

I have to say that the installation did not proceed exactly as per the Hauppauge instructions - it needed two looks at the CD for a start, not one - and in other minor details I had to invent my way through setup on the Windows ME test machine. But that will not be a problem for anyone who is at all familiar with software installation.

Connections

So provided you followed hardware connection to the letter, setup is relatively smooth. I do wonder, though, whether some manufactures actually run through their own installations, according to their published directions, to see that they are correct.

No matter, following setup and a couple of reboots, the Hauppauge channel autoscan facility was simply wonderful. You select, from a list, the location of your local transmitter (the one your aerial points to) and sit back while it finds, installs, and even labels the stations for you.

Channels

I finished up with a list of eleven channels, no less, all of them free-to-air digital, of course, and all yielding splendid picture quality and sound. You can resize the picture to whatever you like - full screen, top corner, or whatever - or you can minimize the picture to leave you with sound only (OK for the news broadcasts).

The picture is 'wide screen' in aspect ratio by default, and that is locked in the menus. However, you can switch it off and then adjust both height and width if you have the taste. You can have nothing but the picture on display, or you can enlarge the display and leave the adjusters on view. They include the channel, program information, language, and also the record button.

This device also claims to give you digital stereo radio (of which, free-to-air, you might expect BBC Parliament), but mine failed to offer it from my local transmitter. The box lists thirteen digital TV channels you might receive; as I say, I got eleven of them from the Chesterfield transmitter.

Recording

Using efficient MPEG-2 compression, simply clicking on Record starts to dump the 'footage' to your hard drive. At a rate of 1.8GB per hour of recording, modern disks have plenty of capacity to hold that favourite show while you do something else.

Clicking Record again stops the capture, and then the excellent Hauppauge video replay software, Intervideo WinDVD, lets you select and replay either any track you choose or a list of tracks. The trouble is that you have to go into Explorer and find these tracks. It would have been neat to have them found automatically. Timer starts and stops would also have been nice to have, as would the provision of Teletext.

Your video replay will probably be via Windows Media Player by default, so it's best to not simply double click on recorded files but to put them into the playlist of Intervideo WinDVD.

You'll need

Windows 95 / 98 / 98SE / ME / 2000, a Pentium 500MHz (recommended for reception), sound card, CD Drive, Direct Draw-compatible PCI/AGP graphics card, and digital terrestrial aerial are required.

The device also needs a VGA card with hardware overlay operation. The older ones such as S3 Trio 64, Matrox Millenium I, Matrox Productiva G100 are not suitable, but the following are examples of compatibles: S3 Trio 64V, Matrox Millenium G200 / G400, nVidia GeForce 25 etc.

In conclusion

The Hauppauge WinTV Nova-t USB TV tuner is the best device for this duty - though not the cheapest - that I've tried. And the quality is excellent. I did notice the odd drop-out though. It's best not to operate other applications while you have this program running, especially in Record mode.

A cheaper option is available in the form of a PCI card, but for those who don't have any slots left, or who don't want to fiddle around inside their PC, this USB 1.0 powered device is very good. I say USB-powered, but a mains unit provides the actual current for the device; it's demands will exceed the 500mA per port spec of the USB standard. Shame, but that's life! Mine ran well out of a USB hub, by the way; there seems to be no need for a primary system port.

 

Don Bradbury