MCE TV Tuner Roundup: Featuring ATI's Theater 550 & NVIDIA's NVTV

Second Place: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250

Hauppauge is a name that has been around in the PC TV tuner business for a very long time and they are also extremely common in the MCE scene.  Note that while Hauppauge has a fairly extensive lineup of TV tuners, most of them are quite similar to one another.  For example, the WinTV PVR-250 is identical to the PVR-500, although the latter has two tuners.  The PVR-250 is also identical to the PVR-250MCE and the PVR-350. 

The WinTV PVR-250 actually offered significantly better image quality than the competition.  Everything looked a lot softer rather than having that hard grainy look that we saw in the previous runner-ups. 

The overall picture is quite good, although the colors are a bit oversaturated. In the lower middle you can see minor text box issues.

There were very few text box related issues with the PVR-250, basically nothing compared to the previous few cards.  You do pay for the image quality though. The WinTV PVR-250 sells for between $130 - $150, over twice as much as the 3rd place ATI eHome Wonder.  At that price, it's tough to justify the Hauppauge, even taking into account the image quality benefits.