WinTV DualHD TV Stick with Remote Control Number Tuner 2

Arrived today and my first thought was "it's massive". It is replacing an older PCTV 292e that just stopped working one day and this adapter is twice the size of the old one. But this is dual tuner and it comes with a decently long USB extension cable so there is no problem with clearance where multiple USB ports are close to each other - looking at you raspberry pi. Plugged in to my rpi4 and was immediately detected as a dual tuner and various firmware files were upgraded. Was pre-set to bulk transfer mode out of the box. I'm running libreelec 11 on the rpi with tvheadend server and client installed and enabled and it did take an hour or two to get tvheadend to do the right thing with them but I got there in the end. That's more a tvheadend configuration problem though, not this device.I had tvheadend recording up to 8 different programs at the same time and using both tuners, writing the recordings to NFS mounted shares over the network and writing around 30MB/s to disk. I did have to pick 8 channels that were all on the same 2 MUXes but 7 of those channels were the HD ones. Rpi4 was running at about 20% cpu during this. All recordings played back successfully and other than right at the start of each recording, all seem to be unpixellated and of excellent quality.

For several years I have used an "August" usbtv on my windows7 laptop with Windows Media Centre (or Arcsoft TotalMedia 3.5). I have recently moved to a Win10 laptop, so Windows Media Centre is no longer available to me. I also failed to find a windows10 compatible version of the arcsoft software and I could not get the USB Tuner to work with other interfaces.I have a room at home I use as a home office, I have 2 large monitors linked to my laptop. I like to have TV available while I work.So, I bought the Hauppauge. I downloaded the software from the link given on the leaflet enclosed with the device (Version 8.5) . It installed simply and registered with no difficulty. I then followed the prompts to search for channels, and after a few minutes I was up and running.Picture quality is excellent. I only really want it for watching live TV, so I have not assessed the interface and recording functions.However, the channel information is not particularly detailed and I cannot get the EPG to work properly. I have run the routine to update it, but it still only shows some channel info, and other channels it shows blank info, and you cannot navigate to those channels using the EPG. The device is receiving them OK.One nice touch: it includes a short and good-quality USB extension cable. If you have two USB sockets side-by-side and one is taken up with a tuner like this, the size of the tuner can prevent any other usb-plug being inserted into the next socket. This short extension cable avoids that. I also do not like physically large USB devices plugged directly into my laptop - if they get knocked, it can damage the USB socket of the laptop- this extension cable also avoids that.For me this device, although not the cheapest, is pretty good, but the overall user interface and EPG definitely needs improvement.EDIT Feb 2020: Yesterday I contacted Hauppauge via their website and asked if their was a better software for the stick and the EPG available. My stick was reported as up-to-date whenever I tried the "update" function on the software. I had version 8.5.37210.I got a response from Hauppauge in the UK, after only 15 minutes. As instructed, I uninstalled the software, downloaded a new version form the link they sent (vs 8.5.37283) and installed again. The EPG was then more fully populated, although a couple of the normal free-view channels were missing (Sky News and Dave, although Dave ja vu was there).The Hauppauge rep was exchanging emails with me, and looking at my post-code and the transmitter I was served by (8 miles away), he suggested changing my aerial. from the flat panel I had stuck on the inside of my window.I ordered a "One for All" powered antenna model SV9465 which arrived this morning. I deleted the channels database file, and re-scanned for channels with the new aerial. It found the missing channels and generally the reception is massively better than previously.I am now even happier with the Hauppauge product, and the technical-support was simply brilliant.I have increased my rating from 3-star to 4-star, but I still think the front-end user interface could be better and more informative. It is sad that Microsoft did not support Windows Media Centre into Windows 10.

I have previously owned the PCTV 290e (roughly same price) and August TV (cheaper) USB sticks, so can compare it to those items. The PCTV operation was clunky with the unintuitive TVcentre software , so I always used manual record mode and the results where good, This was a good unit and worked fine for four years, but it always ran hot and eventually died (due, I suspect, to the high running temp).I replaced it with the August T-210 and what a waste of time this has been. It was extremely hard to load and get my PC (I'm running Win7 64bit pro) to recognise the drivers. Then its tuning list was a jumbled mess and the EPG was always in Chinese, in spite of me selecting "English" during installation. It then decided to not work (twice) having software conflict problems that Windows asked to "shut down"! I then had to re-install it again (twice), still getting the software conflict problems (and Chinese EPG!), so eventually I gave up and binned it. Oh, and it ran very hot.I then bought this unit, which installed with no problems whatsoever and when installing the channels, it even asked me which transmitter I wished to use. It picked up and listed all the stations (incl all HD, using rooftop aerial) with their correct UK channel numbers. Note that it records in the *.ts format (good) and even lists the program name as the file name - the others didn't. The EPG works and records with no problems. Whilst I never thought I'd use it, to have two channels, with one on each of my twin HD monitors, so I can watch them both (shades of "The Man Who Fell To Earth") and even record one of them is brilliant, so if you want the bees knees in TV tuners, just buy it.

Once you actually get this device installed which was a bit frustrating as several times it couldn't find my device and had restart the install twice once it did find the device everything went through very quickly even the station scanning, One thing to note and make use of if you have an indoor or loft ariel like I do is to turn on the passive amplifier this gets you a nice clear picture. The remote is not the best and is kind of fiddly to try and use although I am hoping that I can set this up to run on my harmony hub or through my Amazon echo that will make things much easier. What can I say you get what you pay for I bought a £20 USB TV stick and it really sucks the picture breaks up and any HD channels freeze after 15-20 mins this is a quality device worth spending the extra cash on.