Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I purchased three of these and two worked right out of the box. One did not and is currently in the RMA process. The cards were meant to replace Hauppauge 150's that will not support QAM cable. (I also bought two Hauppauge 1255's and more about that in a minute.) After I got the scan done, it took me a minute or two to figure out the scheduling software -- but once familar with it -- it went smoothly.
The Sabrent cards come with a SMALL disc containing drivers and an application called BlazeTV. Don't lose the disc sleeve as it contains the applications serial number and you will be prompted to enter it. After getting the whole thing set up properly -- I watched a few channels and then decided to pull the card and install one of the Hauppauge 1255's. The Sabrent is a PCI bus card and the Hauppauge (this model) is a PCI-e. The performance between the two was impressive(!) and not in the way you might expect.
The Sabrent actually outperformed the Hauppauge, much to my surprise. In fact, the recordings from the Hauppauge were virtually unwatchable, while the Sabrents played in my native VLC without a hitch. (I did discover that by default the Sabrent is set up to record one CD size file and then begin another file for another CD size segment. It is quite possible that a 90 minute show could take 3 or more CD sized files. I corrected that by going into options and resetting the file size to a much larger value.)
I also tried a Hauppauge 1600 and was very dissapointed with it. Although it is a PCI card -- it requires two distinct antenna connections. (One for analog and one for digital.) To be fair -- all of my testing went on with an Asus K8N or P5RD1. Not exactly the fastest boxes on the market, but what I had on hand.
Bottom line for me is: Sabrent is well worth the price for the under $50 market. Hauppauge requires more horsepower -- but comes with a better application (WinTV 7). I will probably add a couple more sabrents to my little farm.
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