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: Great card, but so-so remote
Summary: 5 Stars
The tuner card works great. Vista auto-installs the card, and Media Center setup correctly detects digital, analog, and FM inputs. The signal reception on this card is EXCELLENT. One thing to note is that the card has two coax inputs, but the second one is for an FM input. The first coax input feeds both of the tuners. Each tuner is capable of handling both digital and analog, but since both tuners are fed by one coax input, this means that you can have two digital tuners (connected to an over-the-air antenna) or two analog tuners (connected to a cable box), but not both. But you can always add another single or dual tuner card to your computer. I have used Media Center with 4 tuners total, and it works fine. I use this card on a Core 2 Duo with 4 GB DDR2 RAM and a 512 MB video card, and on a Pentium 4 with 1 GB DDR RAM and a 128 MB video card, and it works great on both systems. You can buy the card separately, or with a MCE remote.
The remote that comes with the card is ok, but the IR receiver for the remote is a little lacking. I am not sure if IR receiver itself is not able to receive the IR signals from the remote well, or if the problem is the IR input in the card into which the IR receiver plugs. You have to play with the location of the IR receiver and stand directly in front of the receiver in order to get good reception for the remote. On a tight budget, this remote is ok, but I would recommend buying the card without the remote, and purchasing a separate MCE remote. There are several inexpensive IR remotes with USB IR receivers that work well. The Microsoft MCE remote with learning for the TV power and volume control is excellent (but expensive).
Digital camera Review: Great dual TV tuner
Summary: 5 Stars
I was looking for a dual tuner to install on my new PC. I initially looked at a PC with a built in tuner but none had a dual tuner included. My plan was to replace cable with a PC and this dual tuner has done the trick. No issues so far and been using it since 1/31/2011. This thing lets me watch and record at the same time. Actually, I setup my antenna with a splitter so one end goes into the PC using this dual tuner and the other directly to the TV. This way if 2 shows are being recorded I can just switch the input to the TV/Antenna and watch live TV.
The remote works great and allows me to control Media Center such as recordings, home videos, music, pictures as well as Netflix or Hulu.
Digital camera Review: Great for Beyond TV 4
Summary: 4 Stars
This product works perfectly with Snap Stream Beyond TV 4. [.........]
I have 2 digital tuners and 2 analog tuners on my pc. This records multiple inputs and automatically downloads the cable TV and local TV program guide. The picture is great. The software takes some time to tweek to your inputs and program guide. You must be willing to spend some time.
Digital camera Review: Great for HTPCs
Summary: 5 Stars
I have two of these running in my Windows 7 HTPC allowing me to record up to four shows at a time. Digital picture quality is perfect and analog is better than any other card I've used.
This thing sips CPU cycles. If you'll be using analog sources, stick with a card that has built-in hardware MPEG encoding. My system would jump to 50%+ CPU use viewing analog sources with another card (software encoder), but you'll barely notice any increase with this one.
I had some issues getting the IR remote working, but Hauppauge's excellent support took care of me.
Digital camera Review: Great for OTA reception, Clear Qam doesnt really work yet.
Summary: 3 Stars
The OTA reception of the card is very good even with my indoor antenna, and it installed and worked pretty much flawlessly on Vista 32 bit media center with the TV pack installed.
However, once I moved to ClearQam, nothing worked at all. It didnt pick up any of the stations, and installing numerous "beta" drivers to fix the problem didnt work. Hauppage cannot get clearqam to work reliably - check the online forums.
I switched to an HDhomerun tuner from Silicondust, and it has worked great for Clearqam out of the box.