Hauppauge releases WinTV V6 with QAM support

One of the first things most people do when they buy a TV tuner card for their PC is to throw away the PVR software that came with the tuner. Windows Media Center, BeyondTV, SageTV, MythTV or Media Portal do a much better job of letting you watch and record TV.

So I've never spent much time with Hauppauge's WinTV software, even though I've purchased 4 Hauppauge TV tuners over the years. Version 6 was just released, and it's worth taking a look at. The software includes a new streamlined (and skinnable) interface and a new taskbar for recording, pausing, and playing TV.

But more importantly, WinTV V6 includes a driver update that allows HD tuners like the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600 to receive QAM signals. In other words, you can connect your PC to your digital cable and receive any unencrypted HD channels available from your provider. That probably includes most of the major broadcast networks.
Unfortunately you'll only be able to view QAM channels using WinTV V6. But you could always schedule recordings using the clunky WinTV and then play them back later using Windows Media Center. It's clunky, but it should work. Hopefully a future driver update will let you use 3rd party applications to record and view QAM programming.

The update also allows the remote controls that ship with Hauppauge tuners to serve as Media Center remote controls.