Hauppauge! HVR-1100

The HVR-1100 is a great all-rounder from Hauppauge. It is a great Hybrid Video Recorder - infact, it's got to be one of the best on the market!

The tuner is able to receive both Analogue and Digital aerial and cable television signals. The Digital tuner is also capable of receiving DVB-T radio stations that would be available on Freeview.

The card comes with a S-Video In socket and a Composite In socket. These allow you to connect an external video source (such as a camcorder or VCR) to your PC. Then you can record off such external devices to your PC.

When watching TV, you'll be happy to know that the card features "Time Shifting." This allows you to pause and rewind live television at your pleasure!

The latest HVR-1100 comes equipped with a 45-button remote, for a great experience when using the card, a FM aerial for when listening to the radio when using Hauppauge's Radio application and a software called WinTV 2000 to view TV on your pc if you do not have Media Centre.

When using Media Centre with your card, please note that you will have to replace the 'remote.ini' file in your Windows system folder ('C:/Windows').

Before using the card with Media Centre, you will too need to make sure that you have ready a good Video decoder. Among the most common of these are the Cyberlink DVD Decoder and nVidia PureVideo (although this decoder can often cause stuttering).

Overall, this is a mighty good card but, if you don't want too much pressure on your computer's CPU and GPU, go for the Hauppauge HVR-1300, as this has it's own built-in Hardware encoder, allowing relief for your system.