The last twelve months has seen the personal computer create a significant new niche for itself: that of a home entertainment system.  The versatility and power of the PC combined with the wealth of new PC-based audio and video products means that the PC is now a very real and low-cost alternative to buying a separate DVD player, CD player, MP3 player, games console and video recorder.  Combined with a video capture card and LCD monitor, the PC now even offers the chance of being a low cost flat-screen TV system - which remain beyond the reach of most consumers.  This new role for the PC is helped in no small part by the recent appearance of small form factor (SFF) PCs on the market, that offer the same power of their larger cousins, but are packaged in a much smaller, elegant, case and are fitted with a low-noise cooling solution to allow them to sit comfortably in the family living room.

Microsoft has recognized this new business opportunity and launched Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) which extends Windows XP Professional Edition to include live TV viewing, personal video recording functionality and all the CD-audio, MP3 and DVD-playing already available with Windows Media Player - but controlled by a greatly simplified menu system via a remote control.   The aim is to allow you lie back on your sofa, and browse seamlessly between your family photo album, audio collection, video collection, play a DVD or watch TV.

However, unlike with previous releases of Windows, Windows MCE is not available to buy for installation on your home computer.  Microsoft insist that you buy a complete new “Media Center PC” built by Microsoft’s partner PC manufacturers.  According to Microsoft’s own description of a Media Center PC, they are:

“outfitted with powerful processors, high-capacity hard disks, CD-ROM/DVD drives, and rich graphics and audio capabilities. In addition, Media Center PCs include a remote control and TV tuner card, and might also offer features that enable you to connect the PC to your home entertainment system”.

Looking quickly on Pricewatch.com to see precisely what a Microsoft-approved Media Centre PC comprises, it seems that they typically comprise the following: 19 monitor, 2.0GHz P4 processor, 512MB PC2700, 80GB HD, GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB, 48x16x48 CDRW, 16xDVD, SBLive, Inspire 4.1 speakers, 56K modem - and cost $1500 for the pleasure.  In other words, a Media Centre PC is probably pretty much like the computer you already own.  If you have reasonable processor, 4.1 audio, video with TV-out and ATA/100 hard disk you’ve basically got yourself the makings of a Media Center PC.  All you need to add is a TV tuner to capture TV signals, an infra red remote control and a hardware MPEG encoder to allow the TV signal to be digitized and stored on your hard disk in real time, acting as a personal video recorder (PVR).

This is where the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 comes in.  The WinTV-PVR-250 turns your PC into a digital TV recorder, with a 125-channel stereo TV tuner, hardware MPEG-2 encoder and IR remote control.  Costing less than $150, the PVR250 appears to be an attractive alternative to spending over $1500 for an overpriced Microsoft-approved Media Centre PC.  Hauppauge also sell the PVR350 which also includes an FM tuner.

Off course, even with the WinTV-PVR-250, Microsoft won’t allow you to install their Windows MCE, but the PVR-250 comes with a fully-featured set of software in its own right.  The only question, therefore, is how well does it perform?

Read on to find out.

WinTV Remote

WinTV-Remote is a small background process (1.5MB) that is added to the Startup menu.  When this is running it is possible to use the infrared (IR) remote control supplied with the card.  The remote control offers all the usual features you'd expect from a TV and VCR remote control.  From the remote you can access all the functionality of the card including:

• Starting and stopping the WinTV 2000 and WinTV 32 applications
• Switching between full screen and windows modes
• Selecting a channel by number, or moving up and down
• Changing volume and muting the sound
• Pause and unpause live TV, including skip forwards and backwards and exit pause mode
• Record and playback live TV, plus rewind, pause and fast forward

The remote works reasonably well, but not perfectly.  My main complaints are that:

• Changing channels is slow - it takes about one second to move from one channel to the next.  This makes "channel surfing" impractical.  This is actually a function of the card rather than the remote itself.
• Starting, stopping, rewinding, etc a recording when in full screen mode causes the system to revert to windowed mode.  I would have preferred the system to stay in full screen mode, and an onscreen display to have been used.
• The remote actually only controls the active window.  Thus hitting "Full" to view the TV in full screen mode will actually cause another application's window to maximize if that application had the current focus at the moment the button was pressed.

WinTV-Remote as an application is adequate, but doesn't fulfill the complete "home multimedia" need.  Whilst it controls the WinTV-PVR-250 well, it doesn't provide any facility for controlling other multimedia applications - such as Windows Media Player or WinAmp - or offer a large on screen menu for selecting applications, as with Windows MCE.  There are third-party shareware applications such as uIce that claim to support this, however.

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• WinTV Remote (0 of 12)
• Specification (0 of 12)
• WinTV 2000 - recording TV (0 of 12)
• Ulead DVD MovieFactory SE (0 of 12)
• WinTV 2000 - playback (0 of 12)
• VCDConvertApp (0 of 12)
• Installation (0 of 12)
• WinTV Scheduler (0 of 12)
• Conclusions (0 of 12)
• WinTV 2000 - pausing live TV (0 of 12)
• nanoPEG Editor 2.3 (0 of 12)
• WinTV 2000 - setup (0 of 12)