Hauppauge 1192 WinTV HVR-1950 External USB HDTV Tuner/Video Recorder by HAUPPAUGE
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Digital camera reviews of Hauppauge 1192 WinTV HVR-1950 External USB HDTV Tuner/Video Recorder
Digital camera Review: Great with Media Center...
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my second tuner and far exceeds the 'average' tuner I purchased at a local electronics store. Hauppauge provided excellent customer service helping me decide which tuner was best for my computer and my needs. I have a new HP system running Vista 64-bit and wanted a tuner to run with the Media Center already installed. It did not come with a TV tuner. The HVR-1950 model 1192 comes with an external MPEG-2 encoder which doesn't draw resources from the computer. Great for watching TV while working in other programs simultaniously. It also comes with it's own viewing program (WinTV V6) which I find relatively user friendly but I prefer to use Media Center for TV viewiewing, recording, and scheduling. The USB connection makes installation easy. Setup in Media Center was simple and picture quality and sound is as good as fatory installed Hauppauge tuners.
The package also comes with an FM radio antenna, remote control, and IR Blaster to control channel changing on cable or satellite boxes.
My only complaint was over the initial setup. Although the instructions are fairly complete for XP and Vista OS they do not address Vista-64 issues thoroughly. For Vista-64 users only, if you receive a message about "No device attached or no driver installed" even after going through the driver installation, you need to download the driver specfically for Vista 64 bit OS for the HVR-1950. http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_hvr1950.html. I had to hunt this down on Hauppauge website but once that driver is downloaded, setup completed perfectly and installation was complete. It was a little work but well worth the results. I love the tuner and my Media Center!
Digital camera Review: Great with tiny drawbacks
Summary: 4 Stars
very nice external TV tuner
if you have windows media center , you don't need to install the win TV nor add the remote antenna
FM antenna, works OK but not great
it heats up a little bit a concern for the long term usage !!!
64 bits users go to the website and install the driver from there rather than the CD
has RCA outlet -----> i am using it for several screens with RCA splitter , works great
connect the cable to the TV Tuner, u can run on PC now, more options, get and RCA cable or IF transmitter if u want to go completely wireless and connect it to ur LCD or older TV (not a very smart idea for HD) but for HD the primary signal is best when directly connected to the ur LCD or plasma and u can obtain secondary signals by cable splitter
Digital camera Review: HDTV needs a faster PC
Summary: 5 Stars
I think this product is great. I bought it to upgrade my WinTV-PVR-USB2 receiver to one that receives HDTV. I downloaded the latest drivers and software from the internet. And, I had no problems installing the HVR-1950 and setting it up. The reception is fantastic and it picked all the local digital stations. I also appreciate the integrated radio.
The only issue is that HDTV (ATSC) requires much more computer power than standard over the air TV (NTSC), which I didn't realize when I bought this. I have an AMD Athlon 3900+ with 1GB RAM, an NVidia 6800 GT AGP video card, and Win XP Pro. The computer was a bargain buy 4 years ago, but played WOW and Doom3 fine. However, it does have trouble with HDTV. The WinTV app (included) runs fine for the most part but pegs the CPU. Actually, I prefer GB-PVR (downloaded from internet) but had to tweak the codecs to get something with acceptable performance on my machine. Occasionally it glitches. The sound will be fine, but the video may occasionally pause for just a split second. It gets bad if the CPU overheats, so if I keep it well ventilated I can live with it. But, absolutely no multitasking. I cannot have Firefox open in the background and surf the internet while watching TV. So, just a word of warning if you have an older PC that you want to watch HDTV on.
Digital camera Review: HVR 1950 has heat problems
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought a new HVR 1950 to use with Sage and all worked well. After a day or so I noticed that the HVR would get a scrambled signal every once in a while. The only way to fix the signal problem was to stop all Sage services and un-plug the HVR and re-boot it. I did some reading on the net and found others with the same problems, even after returning and receiving new units. Heat was suggested as the cause, and the unit does get rather warm.
I have now positioned the HVR so that I only have this problem every couple weeks now. I have the unit suspended in the open air, bottom up. It is inside an entertainment center with all of the other little heat generators. It only seems to have the problem now when someone forgets and closes the cabinet doors, so I am going to say it is a "heat problem".
Thought this might help others with 1950's and might warn those that are thinking about one. Other than the heat issue the unit has very good audio and video quality.
Digital camera Review: HVR-1950 works thru USB 2.0 hub
Summary: 4 Stars
Formerly used ATI TV Wonder USB2. It failed after installing SP3. I'm not one to rebuy from same vendor after failure. HVR-1950 has restored TV to my notebook with an unexpected advantage: Wonder never worked through USB hub, HVR-1950 does. I haven't mastered the PVR functions, didn't use such with Wonder, may not with HVR-1950.