Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 REVIEW DATE:  03.25.03 Product: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 Price: $140 street Company info: Hauppauge Computer Works Inc., www.hauppauge.com     $140.00
By Bill Howard
Hauppauge tuner cards have been bringing TV to PCs for years. In fact, if a computer manufacturer wanted Microsoft certification for the first generation of Media Center PCs, it had to use a Hauppauge product. The WinTV-PVR-250, a card you install in conjunction with your PC's existing graphics card, is midway in the Hauppauge line and offers a good combination of features and affordability. It includes coaxial and S-Video inputs (but no TV output), a small 21-button remote, and a link to TitanTV, an excellent site that lets you see a 3-hour guide to 20 channels and then click to control the WinTV recorder. The upmarket WinTV-PVR-350, about $90 more, adds a hardware MPEG-2 decoder (both have hardware encoders), an FM tuner, and a TV output.