Hauppauge 1213 WinTV-HVR-2250 PCI-E x1 Dual TV Tuner by Hauppauge
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Our Price: $200.38 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Hauppauge 1213 WinTV-HVR-2250 PCI-E x1 Dual TV Tuner
Digital camera Review: Forced to agree
Summary: 3 Stars
Absolutely rediculous, I'd have to agree. While this card did receive the 'Gold Standard' rating from PC Magazine, the fact that Amazon is charging $40 more than the Hauppauge online store for an identical product is mind boggling.
From the Hauppauge page:
WinTV-HVR-2250 TV tuner with
Windows Media Center remote control kit
$149.00
Other online stores have it as low as $125. So why would I buy here?
I give the product 4 stars, but Amazon only 1 for trying to rip us off. 4 stars for the product because of the dual tuner limitation (or at least confusion). So I compromised and marked 3 stars.
Digital camera Review: Good Card, OK software, Useless remote
Summary: 4 Stars
This setup took me a little while to get going in my system (Intel® Core 2 Quad Processor Q8300, 2.50GHz with 4GB of RAM running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit)I never could get the IR remote to work. Don't know if I got a bad one or what.
1. I installed the drivers from the CD
2. I installed the trial version of Beyond TV (worked ok but picture was very jerky)
Had to research and found that I had to turn off my anti-virus software to get the picture to be OK.
3. Tried Sage TV - didn't like that nearly as much.
4. Uninstalled Sage TV
5. Installed WinTv from CD and latest version and drivers from Hauppauge site
6. Remote still wouldn't work and didn't like WinTv as much as Beyond TV
7. Bought Beyond TV and Firefly Remote
8. Installed software for Firefly Remote. Love it!
9. Attempted to uninstall WinTv -- no luck -- log files were absent. Had to manually remove all components of WinTv and IR remote.
The picture is pretty good with this card. My source is basic cable and sometimes, using my Tivo, the picture would pixalate, especially on action scenes. It is much smoother with this card.
I get FM radio through this card clear as a bell using an external antenna. So I can record NPR broadcasts.
Digital camera Review: Good card - Bad remote
Summary: 4 Stars
The card is easy to install and use. But don't waste your money on the remote that will not work. There is also no support from the manufacturer.Digital camera Review: Good card for Windows 7 Media Center
Summary: 5 Stars
I am using this with a Window 7 x64 media center. It is a solid card under windows 7. I am using Comcast so the number of clear channels is somewhat limited. (broadcast and the music channels) it gives a great picture for the broadcasts in HD. We tried to use OTA with another card but due to our location we don't have a good shot at the DC stations that are close but on the other side of a mountain and we are too far from the stations in the other direction.
The hardest part is the lack of schedule information that is available automaticaly. I had to look at the channels and figure out what was playing then manually tell it what channel it was. After that it worked like a charm. I have updated all of my schedules so that they prefer HD but will fall back to SD if they have to. As I still have my older dual tuner card in the machine it has really opened up the options because in the past we ran into watching conflicts with only 2 tuners. This happened alot during the early part of the seasons due to new shows all being on at the same time. I don't expect that we will have this issue in the future other than if there are 3 hd shows that we want to get but the upside is that we will get 2 shows in HD and the 3rd will be in SD and while that isn't the best atleast we won't miss it all together.
The picture quality is outstanding for the HD content and the SD stuff is the same as with my old tuner so I haven't noticed any difference in the recordings.
I know that people have had problems with it under Vista but with Windows 7 it has been rock solid. It took 5 minutes to install it and the longest wait was in Media Center letting it scan for all the new channels.
We didn't use the included remote because I already had a remote from the old card and just continued to use it. I did notice that the new remote did not have all the buttons that my old one had that gave direct access to the various media areas such as My Music, My Videos, My Pictures... though it may just have moved them around and I didn't understand the new pictures on the keys. But as the tv has to be family friendly I didn't want to swap it out or my wife would have vetoed.
Digital camera Review: Good card, could be better
Summary: 3 Stars
When I first installed the software & drivers I had several issues, the card stopped working after waking the computer up, the WinTV7 wasn't working properly, I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling everything several times.
After downloading the software updates from the hauppauge website, most of the problems were fixed, still have some bugs, but is working much better. The auxiliary A/V panel came with mini-jack ports for the audio, I first thought those were RCA ports by looking at some pictures on the internet.
The remote control is just good for me, haven't give any problems yet, and the TV card works very well with the Windows 7 Media Center. Right now I'm running Windows 7 64 bits and using it with analog cable TV.
What I find really annoying is the lag created when changing the channel, it takes around 2 seconds to be able to see the picture because of the encoding, is not much but I'm used to a faster response. This was improved on a WinTV 7 update by adding some hauppague codecs that makes it a little bit faster, but on MCE you'll probably have to mess with the registry to get that fixed. That gets worst if you're planning to plug a device such as a DVD into the auxiliary A/V, you'll definitely notice the lag when using the DVD remote control.