Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE

Pros: dual tuners, dual recording, dual watching

Cons: Lack of decoder in the box (that the PVR-150 has) lack of cables, remote...LACKING, in TUNER QUALITY. HIGH PRICE!

Summary: I spent way too much time bloviating in the PVR-150 blog. But this is a card that has also outlived it's high price. This card like the younger sibling (albeit- much better packaged little brother PVR-150)is so in need of a 50% price drop to offer some reasonableness.

I listed the dual tuning among its postitives, but suppose we took that away for a second. Then what, the video quality is no better than the ATI's Pro series PCI cards that are $40+ full price and often $20 MIR's accompany them. So if the quality isn't great then really itsn' only selling point is the ability to dual up!

Why not invest your money, sometimes even less money is a HDTV tuner card. I am in the process of test running two from ATI (old & new). But for $60 the older ATI HDTV came fully loaded with software front & back end, cables, remote, antenna......and it decodes regular & High Def. TV. To me it is a no brainer.
SKIP IT! I own more cards and have tested the main boards from Haupie & ATI. This one was a great set up two years ago. Now its tired at that price... At $50+ it has new life, eventhough the the quality is LESS than ATI's 550 Chip & the 650 Chip. ATI dumped the Elite (550) in favor of the 650 HD TV line Haup is behind the curve. ATI missed its opportunity of combining the 550 chip or the 650 Chip into an All-In-Wonder setup.

Hopefully enough people will push for a fully Hardware Mpeg 650 HDTV All-In-Wonder Card with a X1950 or next generation DX10 platform. I can only hope