Turn your PC into a home entertainment system (Hauppauge WinTV Primio FM)

Member Name: cjkace

Product:	Hauppauge WinTV Primio FM
Date:	16/06/01 (3169 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Remote control TV on your PC monitor, FM stereo radio, teletext

Disadvantages: Only captures to AVI

I have my computer in the living room, so I bought a TV card for watching the TV on my PC, while my girlfriend is watching other channels. After scouting around and reading various reviews I settled on the Hauppage WinTV Primio, which is a mid-priced card (approximately £60 depending where you shop), and comes with FM stereo radio and a remote control.

The card is very easy to install, and there were no problems with the drivers, which I've seen with other TV Cards. In fact the drivers scan your system and tune themselves to whatever is in your system and warn you about any potential problems you might have. A small cable, which is very short, is supplied that links the TV card to your soundcard. This means that the TV card must be put in a PCI slot close to where your soundcard is situated. (No more than one spare PCI slot seperating the two). You have three options when connecting to your picture source. RF (normal TV aerial), composite or s-video. I used an RF lead simply because my computer is over 7.5 metres away from the source, making a s-video cable expensive and as far as I am aware composite cable only supplies the picture, meaning another cable for the sound.

There are two other sockets on the back of the card, one of which is for the supplied FM stereo radio aerial and the other for an infra-red port which you use with the supplied TV remote (more about the remote lower down).

Once I had everything connected I loaded the software which comes in two flavours, WinTV 32 and WinTV 2000. The WinTV 32 version is a little basic and reminds me of the early versions of Microsoft's Media Player, although it works very well. I used the WinTV 32 to set-up the channels, which it found first time, including my OnDigital set top box. I had to re-scan to get the video channel but that was no major hassle. I then switched to the WinTV 2000, which has a prettier interface but seems to function exactly the same as the older version. <
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Watching TV is a breeze, and the buttons for teletext and capture are easily accessible on the main interface, although I don't use either very much. The video capture function, only captures to AVI so there is the 2Gb file size limit, which limits you to about 20 minutes of uncompressed AVI video. I have a free version of Uleads VideoStudio, which I got from a magazine, which I use to capture the TV as it will compress into MPEG2. As for the teletext, it's just the same as on your TV.

The remote control is quite interesting. You plug a lead into your TV card which has an infra-red receiver on the end. You then stick this to any surface using the sticky velcro tabs. You can then channel surf your computer from your arm chair. Not that great, you're thinking? The best thing about the remote is that you can re-programme the remote to power any of your applications that have short-cut keys (Winamp, WinDVD etc). There is a freeware apllication that will do this and it works! I can now power WinDVD from my sofa, meaning that I can watch my DVD's in comfort.

The remote programmer can be found at:-

http://dschnabel.virtualave.net/irctrlen.htm

or just do a search on Google for 'wintv remote'.

All in all this is a great card. Because of the way I've wired my TV, Video and OnDigital box, I only need one wire into the card to get all the channels and by plugging my mother-in-laws video camera into the back of the video I can also capture the home movies (but only in analogue). There are cheaper cards available, but there is always a limitation with them. I couldn't find a better card for the money. It's awesome.

Note - It is important that you get the latest drivers (4.19) and TV software (2.21) if you are using Windows Me, as it fixes the problems that can occur when using the Windows Movie Maker.

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