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My first experience of a television tuner card, just over five years ago, was a Hauppauge unit.  Maybe because of this, along with an element of rose-tinted nostalgia, I have always had a soft spot for the company's range of analogue and digital tuners whether these were external USB devices or of the PCI card variety.  Generally the company's products have proved easy to install but unfortunately the same can not be said of my experience with the Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T PCI card.

The Nova-T card provides the capability to view digital terrestrial TV on your PC and listen to radio which acting as your PVR (Personal Video Recorder).  It is of the small form type.  A quick inspection of the card failed to fore-warn me of the trials and tribulations that were to arise when I tried to fit the device into the test system.  The problem, probably shared equally between the layout of the card's back-plate with its two protruding socket connectors and the close proximity of the motherboard to the outer casing, involved a great deal of juggling around and trying to approach the task from different angles.

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With the card lined up with a PCI slot, the socket connectors were blocked from the available access slot on the casing and vice versa.  A certain amount of force was required to get passed this impasse and even when this was achieved, with a fair amount of perspiration and some strange adjectives deemed unsuitable for this review, my troubles were not over. 

A light on the card glowed to indicate that the card was seated correctly.  However as soon as I tried to screw the card in place, the light went out as the card became unseated.  I finished up leaving the card unscrewed.  Adding the aerial lead to the appropriate socket, without actually dislodging the card, proved to be a delicate operation.  An IR receiver cable, enabling use of the supplied remote control, also needs to be connected to the card.

Installing the supplied software was easier by comparison but hardly an ideal experience.  Drivers head the list of items to be installed.  There are four drivers and none of them have been certified by Microsoft for use with Windows XP but this should not be a problem.  Each driver is installed separately, fortunately without the need of any reboots.  Hauppauge has included a separate utility (HCWclear.exe) in case there is a problem with the driver installation but this was not necessary in my case.

The main application software consists on 12 user-selectable modules - ten are selected by default - and the process requires a minimum of user interaction.  A computer restart is required before you can make use of the card and appropriate software.

You are given a choice of two applications for viewing live television.  These applications are WinTV32 and WinTV 2000.  The first time you run either application, a scan will be carried out for available Freeview and digital radio (that's DVB and not DAB).  Once the scanning process was completed, a list of 49 channels was presented.  These channels were split 25/24 between television and radio.  Obviously not all Freeview channels were identified.

Unfortunately not all the 25 TV channels displayed viewable content.  In fact nine of the channels, including both BBC1 and 2, produced just a blank screen.  The quality of display produced by other channels however was fine even when viewing in full-screen mode.  You can record live television while watching or set up a schedule for recording television shows on a single, daily or weekly basis.  All the various controls can be applied on-screen or via the supplied remote control.

Even disregarding the problems I encountered physically adding the card to the test system, I was disappointed with the performance of the WinTV Nova-T product.  It failed to identify a number of channels that should have been available and then, to compound matter further, was unable to display content from some other channels.  When it did work, the quality was fine but this does not excuse its various failings.  The card has been priced at £59.50 and requires Windows XP with a minimum of 128MB RAM and a Pentium III 800MHz CPU.

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_nova-t-pci.html