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: Poor Software
Summary: 2 Stars
The hardware is well made and they give you some nice quality cables. But the software is very poor. I could not get it to install and work on a Windows 7 box. It installed fine on Windows XP. However when transferring from some older video cameras (via composite input) it seems that the video would get out of sync and then the input would look like a split screen with the bottom of the video at the top and the top of the video at the bottom, rendering it useless.
I would recommend saving your money and looking else ware for a better product (unless they change the software package).
Digital camera Review: Poor and not what I expected
Summary: 2 Stars
If all you need is over the air TV or clearQAM The HVR-1950 is probably OK and will work with Windows Media Center. But if you need to use a set top box It doesn't work at all. I bought this because it had the built-in IR receiver and IRBlaster. Unfortunately Windows Media Center will not recognize the IR hardware so you can't even set it up. You can get wthe WinTV V7 application to set up, but the blaster still will not operate the set top box. And lastly it seems that after a period of time the tuner stops working and it takes several power cycles before it will start up again.Digital camera Review: Poor software mars device
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased this device so that I could record analog cable programs. The device seems adequate for letting me view TV, but if I try to record I run the risk of locking up my machine. If I schedule it to record a program, there is only a one in three chance that it will successfully record the program.
It is not unusual for me to find my machine almost paralyzed with its processor running at 95% to 100%. Something in the software starts taking over processor power either midway through a scheduled recording, or when the recording ends. The only way I can regain control of my computer is through a hard reboot.
I am very unhappy with this purchase and I am going to see if I can send it back to Amazon for a refund.
Digital camera Review: Pretty good with one bad "gotcha"
Summary: 4 Stars
I have had this for a few months now.
It works as expected. And it integrates well into my orb [...]software.
The only catch is that this product has poor support for set-top boxes. It states it has hundreds of preprogrammed set-top box codes in memory. But I tried three different Comcast/Motorola set-top boxes with the HVR-1950 with no luck.
I talked to Customer Support at Hauppauge, but they could not offer much help. Now I am stuck with a product I can't use because my cable company does not work without a set-top box :-(
(My cable provider did a mandatory switch over a few months after I got this product.)
But if your cable service does not need a set-top box, this product is "Thumbs Up"!
Digital camera Review: Reduced System Requirements if you have an XvMC capable video card.
Summary: 5 Stars
If you have an XvMC capable video card, you will be able to watch hi-def videos with a slower CPU as the PVRUSB2 & HVR-1950 export a MPEG2 stream. On my 2x750 P3 box with 1G RAM, I've seen CPU resources drop as much as >70% by simply ensuring the video is being played using the XvMC feature of my (NVidia) video card. (But, I had to convert Microsoft's test high definition wmv's to mpeg2 format... so it may seem I can play hi-def @ 30% max CPU, the video stream might have been compressed during the transcoding.)
For example, I was unable to play 1080 hi-def prior to transcoding to MPEG2. After transcoding, CPU rates is no more then 30% and playable. The other catch, I'm not playing a stream from the HVR-1950 yet, as I'm planning to buy on within the next few weeks.
Some things you may need to know:
- You usually need the proprietary drivers for this feature.
- The XvMC feature for accelerated MPEG2 playing might be dropped with the newer video cards.
- XvMC works under MythTV. (But has the side effect of having a greyed instead of color on screen menu.)
- You can test if your system supports XvMC by grabbing standard and high definition video from the Internet. (Microsoft has published many high definition videos in multiple resolutions.)
(The purpose of this review is to advise people of the XvMC feature and the lack of mention within the HVR-1950's required system requirement postings. MPEG2 - XvMC - video acceleration.)
UPDATE!
2009.05.29: Just got my HVR-1950 yesterday and plugged it into my Linux box (after pre-installing the firmwares as instructed by the pvrusb2 Linux website) and it works as I planned with XvMC. CPU usage for live stream playing is around 28-68% on one CPU. Since I'm SMP, it's not a huge issue with resources. Recording is, of course, extremely minimal cpu usage ... if any. So if you wanted to use this device on a MythTV box as a PVR, just recording & no live stream playing with a slower CPU, you'll be just fine!
(Hauppauge should be a little more specific with their h/w CPU specifications concerning "recording only" and optional video cards with MPEG2 acceleration (XvMC)).
Funny, my hvr-1950 remote works on my Linux box too, with the exception of radio -- still needs to be fixed/enabled in the driver. The IR rx/tx on this HVR-1950 is extremely more sensitive then the old PVRUSB2 device. Wonderful!
I chose this box over the competitor HDHomeRun because I figured USB would be more dependable then network broadcasting. Besides, I didn't want the extra traffic on my network. And, the pvrusb2 Linux driver has a very stable past history for 3-4 years with the developer.