I ended up purchasing a Nero LiquidTV on black friday, regularly $199.99, I got it for $29.99. Did I need it? No. Did I want it? Hell yes. It’s basically TiVo for your computer.
In the box it includes:
- Hauppauge WinTV 950q TV tuner
- An antennae
- S-Video adapter
- TiVo Remote
- IR receiver
- IR blaster
I installed the TiVo software which took about 4 tries to get it to install properly. After inputting my serial key I waited a half hour for it to activate, which it didn’t, so I restarted it and it activated within a few seconds. The software was unable to change the channel on my cable box, which forced me to only use the antennae. After the antennae was set up, I was excited to record some shows. While trying to go to channel 6.1, I got “Your signal is too weak” and that happened on every channel. My friend who also bought this says he gets perfect antennae reception, so it may just be my house. So I uninstalled the TiVo software. I set up the tuner with Windows Media Center and got it working decently. I get channel 6.1, and 12.1 and a few others. Channel 8, which is NBC doesn’t show up.
I’m very disappointed in this, when I called Nero to ask them why I couldn’t get the IR blaster to work with my cable box (which is a very standard box) they told me that technical support would cost me $1.29 a minute. I can’t understand why anyone would charge you extra to troubleshoot their crappy product. So I am using my tuner to watch channel 6.1, 12.1, and 49.1 with Windows media center. All in all, I wish I hadn’t purchased this, completely not worth it.
-Shawn
shawn(at)thetechsketch.com
