Hauppauge WinTV Nova-TD 500 Dual digital DVB-T PCI TV card

Very pleased with this TV tuner, The tuner in my Dell netbook was Hauppauge I decided to go for something similar for my desktop. This product's main selling point is the dual tuners (record one channel while watching another) This however requires dual aerial inputs, and I am not inclined to run another cable all round my bedroom. The software is a little basic and Hauppauge seem to be suffering from cyberlink-itis: provide the basics and demand money for additional features. Fortunately though, these are geared towards HD, and this tuner cannot handle those broadcasts. Frequently though, where a channel was 'available', switching to it would result in 'no signal' - having applied the update from Hauppauge's website, this now occurs less often. Basically, if you don't like USB tuners protruding from your computer, the choice of PCI one's isn't great and this is as good as any. Perhaps a little pricey, but probably more reliable longer-term.

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Purchased this after someone at Hauppauge told me it would work nicely with my rig (Vista Ultimate x64, 8Gb RAM, Asus M2NPV-MX, Athlon X2 6000+) And I've been really pleased with it, just install the driver from thier website then use MediaCenter to tune it. Chuck away the remote it comes with, just use a standard MS MCE one. Nice product, easy to setup, no problems.

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Just bought 2 of these dual tuners for two different machines and both are (now) working.
In the first install, a VISTA Home Premium setup but on an 'old' motherboard (circa 3-4 years old design), I ran into the "device not installed" problem whereby the bios doesn't recognise the card and so VISTA has no chance of installing drivers. Moved the card to another PCI slot. No change. Moved Tuner to yet another PCI slot (slot 1!) - and the device was recognised which, together with the latest drivers off Hauppauge web site, then installed effortlessly and tuned in both tuners via Media Centre first time.
Second install - another VISTA premium but on a much more modern GIGABYTE board. Recognized and installed drivers first time and tuned into Media Centre no hassle.
Stop worrying; card is fine but you need to have some way of investigating IF you get install problems - that's the nature of this technical area. If this scares you, got for an external USB TV Tuner and clutter your desktop!

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Lucky to have received the Single antenna/VIA IC/Linux Compatible version... :)

Works fine/tested in MythTV, but using it 24/7 in Vista Home Premium 32bit Media Center with the latest 4.3.25080 drivers without any issues at all, both tuners detected and as long as you have decent signal strength you wont get any stutter.

Much better than my previous Hauppauge HVR-1110 for Vista MCE use, recommended.

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Despite the specification stating only windows support, Linux drivers exist and are in standard kernel look for cx88xx module.

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Using Windows Media Center 2005, this works well. Unlike the Terratec Cinergy 2400 that I have just ditched for repeated signal bombs...

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I've used this card in a Windows XP machine and a Windows Vista machine. Both worked well. I use a roof-top aerial.

The remote control isn't the prettiest thing but is well build and is fully featured.

The supplied TV watching software has a very poor user interface which completely ruins the experience in so many ways. I'd advise you to install just the drivers, and use Windows Media Center. On Windows XP however, you must purchase separate MPEG-2 decoder software which is ridiculous. The Windows Vista media center is particularly slick and irons out a lot of the bugs in the XP version.

Once set up in your living room, you won't regret this choice. The only problem is you'll need to invest in a bigger hard disk to store all the shows.

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Well I ordered one of these a week ago, to use on a Gentoo Linux system with MythTV. I did my research to try and find a card that plays nice with Linux. The reviews for this card seemed good for the most part, except for the so called 'diversity model'. Upon receiving the card, I noticed it looked pretty different to the image on the box (what with it having 2 inputs and other discrepancies). To cut a long story short, The model I received is a new version. I called Hauppauge, who finally said that this card does work with Linux. However, I tried with the 2.6.24 and 2.6.25 kernel and had no joy. Using the 2.6.27 kernel, the card works absolutely fine. You will also need to use the latest firmware available on linuxtv.org. There are plenty of useful guides around to help with Linux installation. It uses the dvb_usb_dib0700 kernel driver. Recommended for any Linux user.

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At the time of writing, some suppliers are shipping a substitute card, the Nova-TD-500. As I noted in a previous review, this card is incompatible with Linux and there are no plans to create Linux drivers. I have contacted Hauppauge about the problem for Linux users and they were extremely helpful. The substitute cards are a short production run forced on them by a part shortage, and the original model is already back in production. They have agreed to replace my card for the Linux-compatible model and other Linux users have reported a similarly helpful attitude. It is also worth noting that patches have recently been written that reportedly enable the remote control and fix the Linux driver stability problems that some users have encountered.

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After much faffing about trying to get this to install, downloaded the latest drivers from the website and it doesnt actually work. doesnt pick up any tv channels at all, even media center wont detect it. ive given it a bad value for money because ive just wasted £53 on it, if it had worked then it would have been a good price for a dual tuner card, and would have scored higher than 2.

so much for the "easier to install and use" statement on the back of the packet - and ive been building pcs for 14 years so i sould know what im doing...

spend the money on a freeview box and a video player!

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