Choosing Between Hauppage Win TV PVR 150-250-350

[sgs]

Planning on pci single tuner, probably Hauppage 150, 250, or 350. Curious that the 250 and 350 are reported as legacy cards (vs the 150) yet the 150 is cheaper. Assuming prices of 90, 138, and 125 for the 150, 250, 350 (respectively), which gives the best bang for the buck? What features are available on one or two of the three, but not all? Do any of the 3 have video quality problems?

Planning on out of the box software or freeware like GB-PVR. Also request NON-Hauppage suggestions. (Avoiding the Hauppage 500 because of reported tuner problems).

My rig:

P4-3000 MHz, 1gb memory
ATI Radeon 9200 SE 128MB AGP 8X Graphics Card.
aopen ax4c II mobo with onboard sound (NO PCI-E), supports agp.
plenty of 7200rpm storage, sata internal and ata external.
Win XP pro (not MCE edition)
10 yr old, 32 inch sd Quasar TV with coax and composite inputs

 

[Rockinacoustic]

I just bit the bullet on the PVR-150 MCE kit today, hopefully it will run well with my media center PC. For $90 it seems like a great deal for what it has to offer.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: sgs
Planning on pci single tuner, probably Hauppage 150, 250, or 350. Curious that the 250 and 350 are reported as legacy cards (vs the 150) yet the 150 is cheaper. Assuming prices of 90, 138, and 125 for the 150, 250, 350 (respectively), which gives the best bang for the buck? What features are available on one or two of the three, but not all?

The 250 is a much older version of the 150 and has a virtually identical feature set. The 350 actually provides hardware-accelerated playback, but that goes through a special pass-through cable, and there are some limitations IIRC which make the 350 not a good solution. I'd stick with the 150.

Do any of the 3 have video quality problems?

Yes and no. SD cable is bad enough, but deinterlacing and upscaling it to fullscreen on a computer monitor makes it look even worse. But no, video quality's not horrible, and I know of no outstanding issues with cable reception on those Hauppauge cards.

Planning on out of the box software or freeware like GB-PVR. Also request NON-Hauppage suggestions.

I've heard that newer Phillips-based tuner cards have better quality than the Hauppauge cards, but I've never personally confirmed this.

(Avoiding the Hauppage 500 because of reported tuner problems).

The tuner problems on the 500 are likely the result of its internal splitter.

My rig:

P4-3000 MHz, 1gb memory
ATI Radeon 9200 SE 128MB AGP 8X Graphics Card.
aopen ax4c II mobo with onboard sound (NO PCI-E), supports agp.
plenty of 7200rpm storage, sata internal and ata external.
Win XP pro (not MCE edition)
10 yr old, 32 inch sd Quasar TV with coax and composite inputs

Sounds like you've got the perfect machine for an SD PVR. Good luck!

 

[Modular]

The only thing that is lacking on the 150 is that it only has one tuner. Other than that it's a great tuner card. I would suggest GB-PVR over the bundled software for sure.

Enjoy!

 

[GregGreen]

I have the 250. The 150 is definitely the way to go at this point. It was not available when i bought mine. Feature set is nearly identical, but the driver support for the 150 seems to be a bit better. The 250 doesn't have 64bit drivers for Vista or XP x64, whereas they are available for the 150.

You might also take a look at some cards based on the ATI Theatre 550 chip. I know there are some manufactured by ATI and Powercolor. I've also read some good reviews on the Dual Tuner Nvidia card.

 

[TerryMathews]

Another thing to keep in mind (from someone who's dealt with PVR-250s on a SageTV box for 2+ years):

Multiple Hauppauge cards work great together... if they're identical. For example, there were two different chipsets on the PVR-250 (commonly referred to as -15 and -16). A 15 and a 16 wouldn't work together, or at least not well.

Moral of the story: If you're going to be a single-tuner guy, go ahead and buy whatever's cheapest. If you're going to be doing multiple tuners though, get PVR-150s and maybe get all of them you want at once.

Another nickel's worth of free advice: If you are doing multiple tuners, don't just use a splitter, get a powered one. You'll be chasing down intermittent video problems that stem back to inadequate signal strength if you don't. Eventually, the card's auto-adjustment trying to compensate for the weak signal will cause it to track clear to a point where you get static, requiring a reboot. I buy a Philips powered 4-1 splitter at Lowe's and it's working great.

In case anyone's wondering:

Windows XP
SageTV v5 (will be v6 on the next rebuild)
Geforce FX5200 connected via S-Video to TV set
2x120GB WD HDs in RAID0 on a FastTrak 66
4xPVR-250s. 1 is a standard PVR-250 for the remote, the other three are MCEs.

Also have a client in the bedroom that's connected via VGA to an HDTV using a Microsoft MCE remote and USB receiver.

SageTV is a great program and I highly recommend it to anyone setting up an HTPC solution - the features it has make it an even better choice than Vista.