Hauppauge 1139 WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid TV Stick External TV Tuner/Video Recorder for PC

I found this to perform as advertised (the little antenna works as well as a bigger set of "rabbit ears" for digital). The instructions were good and install of SW was fast and simple. I'm happy with this product.

This is the first product I have returned to Amazon, I have been a customer for about five years. The tuner seems very much like a beta product, rushed to market without much thought to reliability or ease of use.

Perhaps the problem is user expectation. I am used to a TV working almost instantly when I press 'ON.' With the HVR 950, pressing 'ON' did not yield results after four-hours of set up. The first problem was that the HVR 950 does not support Windows Vista out of the box. There is no inkling of this problem until you Google PVR 950 Vista and download the new drivers. After much tweaking I got it to scan the cable channels but then discovered that if I want to use Windows Media Center, I was SOL...no support for that either--I downloaded a patch, but it did not work. So I used the native interface to choose a program to record went away (leaving the laptop on of course) and got home to watch the program only to be greeted by an error message.

After the next two days I got the HVR 950 to work once, all of the other times I just got the title screen with the Empire State Building on it. I am not sure what was wrong. Of course I could not test it using Over the Air signals because the PVR 950 instructions recommend that you do not use the included antenna for OTR setup--Why include something and then basically say it is probably not going to work? This instruction is another indication that this product is really a beta release and has long to go before it is as easy to use or as reliable as a conventional television.

Installation was very easy. Documentation was clear and easy to follow.

We have very good results, watching TV on the Dell laptop and on the 24 inch wide-screen, flat-panel Dell Monitor with my desktop. It is very convenient to be able to watch TV in every room (say, when our in-laws are here ... everyone gets their own channel!) and the analog cable pipes well into it, too. I've only tried watching TV on my laptop a couple of times: it was fun while traveling. But it is a great way to "grow" the # of TVs we have in the house by 3 more.

This is the 3rd Hauppauge TV on the PC device I have owned, and the 3rd that's delivered exactly what it says it will.

It is resource intensive, but newer Laptop/PC's won't have any problem. I'm using it with an older PC (Athlon64 2800+ w/ 1GB) & a brand new (very fast) Dell Latitude laptop....and it works fine on both. It definitely slows down the PC, but it doesn't impact simple stuff, like light browsing on the internet or using MS Word. I don't even notice that it's running on the multicored & many gigabyted laptop.

Don't try to run this from a USB hub, even if it's just an analog signal. Plug it directly into the PC. This is common sense, and is clearly warned in the manual. Running it from a hub will slow everything else on the hub and the PC to a crawl. I tried this and confirmed it.

Again, I have a developed a great deal of trust in Hauppauge products. I have tried and returned other TV-to-PC products, but have never had a Hauppauge product fail or not deliver what it was supposed to. My short time with this device only reinforces that opinion too.

Easy to install and pretty easy to learn. HD shows look great! However, instructions are so-so. The problems I was having - jerky picture and loss of signal, were definitely due to the weak antenna that came with it. The directions hinted at the problem being computer memory, setup, etc, but I was using it on a brand new Dell laptop. A cheap antenna from a local Radio Shack made a dramatic improvement, but the antenna is too big to take on trips (left it at my son's apt for our next visit). If you plan to use this on the road, you may be frustrated.