What Hi Fi Sound and Vision
19 MAY 2006
Hauppauge WINTV HVR-900
It's simple, really: Hauppage’s WinTV HVR-900 ‘TV Stick’, not much larger than a throwaway lighter, plugs into your computer’s USB port (2.0 only) and transforms your PC into a TV. It delivers both analogue TV and Freeview digital channels, and the company even supplies a little portable aerial – the idea being that you can watch TV while away from home. The package also includes software to pause live TV and make recordings, with or without a timer.
Microsoft XP only
Installation is simple – though your machine must run Windows XP – and the system is easy to operate. In our (thick-walled) test rooms, the portable aerial couldn’t pick up a stable signal, but with our roof-top antenna things were far better, with all channels present.
Programmes appear in a little application on your desktop, but as you increase the window size image quality deteriorates, resulting in blocking. Recordings rely on the quality of the signal, but even when that’s very good, they don’t quite match the quality of the original. Watching through a smallish window, programmes stay pretty clear.
Outdoors, results were mixed.
At one stage the USB stick dislodged, crashing our laptop. However, with some committed aerial juggling you can pick up a decent picture, good enough for the garden.
The HVR-900 is a fair enough idea for, say, those with laptops but no TV, but for best results we’d advise using it with a rooftop aerial.
Back to top
