Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1600 $70 after $20 rabate

[Endeffect]

I bought one of these last night -- it should arrive sometime late next week.

I've never used a TV Tuner card before, so please pardon my ignorance. I get analog cable TV (cable goes directly from the wall into the back of my TV). If I buy a splitter and run a cable into this card, it should be able to pick up all the channels I get on my TV, right?

And if I want to watch OTA HDTV, then I need to get a HDTV antenna, such as the Silver Sensor that was linked above?

Last but not least -- I've heard the software bundled with most of these cards are junk. I saw someone mention the Snapstream Beyond TV software above.. does anyone else have recommendations for software to watch/record/etc. TV that will make life easier?

Thanks in advance!

 

[modemboy]

Originally posted by: sjwaste
Unless you're really far away from the towers, you can just tune those over the air. The quality's usually better, as the cable companies recompress the stream to fit more into less bandwidth.

Not true. FCC regulations prevent your cable company from modifying the local feeds in any way. It is the same feed you get via an antenna. If your company is really lowering the quality, call up the FCC and bust their asses.

 

[Miramonti]

The analog tuner with this sucks imo. I was hoping for an improvement from my current hauppauge wintv card from 1998, but its no better.

In fact its worse, since dscaler won't run with it.

 

[dew042]

Originally posted by: jjsole
The analog tuner with this sucks imo. I was hoping for an improvement from my current hauppauge wintv card from 1998, but its no better.

In fact its worse, since dscaler won't run with it.

That's like complaining that AOL dial up is slower than MSN dial up. Its analog, it has limitations.

The king for analog quality is ATI 550 based.

dew.

 

[Newstech]

I'm confused by the note about DVD compatibility. If I record a 1080i program to my hard drive, what would it take to turn it into a standard, standard-def DVD? Will a normal authoring program be able to deal with that?

 

[filibusterman]

nice have to give this a try. does it include an ir receiver for the remote?

 

[RossMAN]

What's the best HTDV tuner card with QAM support that works with BeyondTV?

 

[Endeffect]

Just got it. I installed the latest drivers and use Beyond TV. Installation was super easy and it worked right away. I've only test analog cable so far, will order an HDTV antenna later. The picture quality is decent. Not nearly as good as it looks on my TV when I have it in full screen, but definitely not awful. I noticed some channels have latency issues with the audio not syncing up perfectly with the video. I'm a newb to this stuff, so I guess I'll figure that out later.

Can anyone explain why the video wouldn't look as good as on the TV, or why the audio would be out of sync on some channels but not others?

Thanks!

PS-DScaler worked fine w/ it, but the best picture quality thus far (between the program that came w/ it and dscaler has been Beyond TV).

 

[jonnyjack]

Originally posted by: Endeffect
Can anyone explain why the video wouldn't look as good as on the TV, or why the audio would be out of sync on some channels but not others?

your monitor has a higher resolution than your tv, same reason why standard def looks like crap on an hdtv.

 

[FDF12389]

Pardon my ignorance, but my monitor(19" Acer Widescreen) is 720p capable, not 1080p capable, so if I get this card and OTA HD what will I have to do to make the picture fit on my screen? Also, no I need a HD antenna, or will the outdoor antenna that was installed on my house in 1999 work?

 

[dew042]

Originally posted by: FDF12389
Pardon my ignorance, but my monitor(19" Acer Widescreen) is 720p capable, not 1080p capable, so if I get this card and OTA HD what will I have to do to make the picture fit on my screen? Also, no I need a HD antenna, or will the outdoor antenna that was installed on my house in 1999 work?

Your antenna should be fine. Your video card should take care of any scaling that needs to be done for the video signal.

dew.

 

[Endeffect]

Ahh, duh. That makes sense.

Thanks .

 

[Slogun]

$20 MIR ended 2/3
Maybe it will be renewed...

 

[sjwaste]

Originally posted by: deadken

Originally posted by: fatBrain
link

It is a new product from Hauppauge. Don't know how good it is. Bought one for myself.

Dude! Hurry up and post back with how GREAT it is! I am very interested in getting one of these. I think that there is supposed to be a 1800 series coming out also, I wonder what the differences are, between the 1600 + 1800, and how well they work. Does either do QAM?

1600 is PCI full height, 1800 is PCI-E half-height. Really the same functionality, or at least it seems, but with different interfaces. Similarly, the 1500 is a card for laptops.

 

[gpgofast]

I went and bought one. Installed perfectly with Vista Home Premium. Vista MCE functions perfectly with it. Watching OTA the 3 major networks. I'm unable to recieve the minor networks as their transmitters are out of view. Well worth the money in my opinion. GP

 

[iliopsoas]

Originally posted by: RossMAN
What's the best HTDV tuner card with QAM support that works with BeyondTV?

ya, i have a similar question as well.

What's the best HDTV tuner that will also tune SD analog and digital signals ?

 

[imthebadguy]

media center compatible?

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: dman
I saw one a week ago at regular price $99 next to the PVR150 at $99 (both a Circuit City). I looked lik ethe HVR1600 does everything the PVR150 does PLUS it does OTA HD. Seemed like a crappy deal for the PVR150.

Though this says "HardPVR" and claims MCE support, I doubt it works as a first or second analog tuner for a MCE machine. That means no cable, sattellite, etc. ATSC comes pre-encoded to MPEG2, so they may just claim "HardPVR." The price leads me to believe that the card only functions as an OTA HDTV tuner in MCE but the box is way too vague about MCE support to be sure. If the PVR150 and HVR1600 do differ like I suspect, then the PVR150 is justified (you could use two PVR150 cards PLUS an HVR1600).

Originally posted by: imthebadguy
media center compatible?

In some way, but it's too vague to be sure if it's just ATSC HDTV or if it also functions as a standard MCE tuner (any reference to analog tuning/PVR doesn't reference MCE, so it's probably their software-encoding app).

EDIT:
It seems like it does do analog MCE recordings.

"Technically speaking
WinTV-HVR-1600 contains two tuners: a ATSC digital TV tuner for over the air digital TV reception plus a 125-channel cable ready TV tuner. For ATSC digital TV, all 18 ATSC formats including 1080i can be watched or recorded to disk as a Program Stream. A highly integrated MPEG-1/2 hardware encoder based on the Conexant -418 is on-board for recording analog cable TV to disk. The playback of the recorded ATSC digital or MPEG-2 encoded analog program is done through a software MPEG-2 player. An on-board IR receiver and transmitter uses a software loaded set top box table for the codes to control a set top box."

 

[MysticWar]

Originally posted by: CZroe

Originally posted by: dman
I saw one a week ago at regular price $99 next to the PVR150 at $99 (both a Circuit City). I looked lik ethe HVR1600 does everything the PVR150 does PLUS it does OTA HD. Seemed like a crappy deal for the PVR150.

Though this says "HardPVR" and claims MCE support, I doubt it works as a first or second analog tuner for a MCE machine. That means no cable, sattellite, etc. ATSC comes pre-encoded to MPEG2, so they may just claim "HardPVR." The price leads me to believe that the card only functions as an OTA HDTV tuner in MCE but the box is way too vague about MCE support to be sure. If the PVR150 and HVR1600 do differ like I suspect, then the PVR150 is justified (you could use two PVR150 cards PLUS an HVR1600).

You do not need to have another tuner card to use this card under MCE. I bought the card today from Circuit City and watched Superbowl with it. I was able to record the game and another analog channel at the same time. It has hardware MPEG2 encoding but that's for encoding analog channels. HD digital channels are already in MPEG2. It doesn't have MPEG2 hardware decoder so the quality of the playback depends solely on the speed of your computer. I have a Pentium D 805 with 1gig DDR400 running Vista Ultimate(with PowerDVD decoder) and the playback is smooth.

Some screenshots from the card.

Screen 1
Screen 2
Screen 3
Screen 4
Screen 5

 

[DanDrop]

Not bad at all!

 

[GoatMonkey]

I got this on Saturday with the Phillips antenna. It's getting all of the major networks and a couple of other public channels. I recorded 5 hours of Superbowl coverage and it used up 41GB of disk space. When I deleted the file it freed up 24 hours of standard def recording.

For the person asking about a card for use with Beyond TV, check their forum located here: http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/
Lots of good info there if you are a user.

The playback of HD programs maxes out my crappy old computer that I use to record stuff. It's an XP2100+ with 1.7 GB and an old GeForce 4600.

Apparently there is a bug in Beyond TV 4.5 that doesn't allow the use of both tuners at once, but is supposed to be fixed in version 4.6. I have 4 other standard def tuners, so I don't really care about that, but if this is your only card it may bother you for a few weeks until 4.6 is available.

I forgot to mail in the rebate form on Saturday, I hope they still take it.

 

[THRILLHOv]

I bought the phillips antenna also.
it seems like it is VERY picky as to the direction i put it.
video is crisp, but "skips." when i turn the antenna it effects the "skipping" so i dont think its my processor.
Sempron 3200
1.25gb DDR 3200
Nvidia 7900gs
Beyond TV 4.5 (wintv 2000's picture was all screwed up)

i live in a brick apartment building on the 2nd of 6 floors.
should i look for a better antenna? (outdoor?) $25 was a good price for me.
suggestions?

also is there a good windows utility to test signal strength of digital OTA channels so i can tweak my placement?

 

[Piblokto]

FWIW, I bought this and the Philips antenna and couldn't get good signal reception. I returned the card and replaced with with a Samsung DTBH260F standalone HDTV tuner (hard to find -- mine was an open box item at CC that I saw when I returned the card). Using the exact same location + antenna I was able to tune multiple channels very well and to watch the Super Bowl. The standalone HDTV tuner is not for everyone, and it doesn't have all the capabilities of the PCI card, but for me it appeared to have better tuner capability.

 

[dew042]

Digital signal is all or nothing. Its very sensitive, and many antennas are very directional.

Enter your address in here and it will tell you exactly where the towers are for all of you local stations. This is really important info:

http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx

I happen to live in an area where all of the HD stations are cluster in one direction, so with a basic directional antenna I can get all of the local stations with 100% signal.

Don't amplify the antenna unless you have a long run of RG6, it just adds noise.

The Antennas Direct DB2 is a great local antenna and its cheap.

dew.

 

[gibster]

I got the Philips amplified antenna from Amazon (PHDTV3, pretty good deal there for $22), and while it works great for my Sony HDTV (I get 12 channels in Denver), it's not as good for this card, even if I amplify the signal. I think I have the antenna in an optimal position (pointy end towards the signal, at an angle with the "underbelly" also toward the signal). While the scan recognizes all channels, not all of them can be tuned, and I have not been able to position the antenna to be able to tune these channels. Also, the Hauppauge software seems flakey with recording programs - sometimes it produces a dud recording (unreadable, at least by WMP). And my snapshots are not working (get an error). The other thing I'm doing is using a splitter for the antenna signal (that's why I wanted an amplified antenna), I'll try it without the splitter. When it works, the recording quality is outstanding, there is no comparison to my analog recordings there. But the space price is heavy - 100MB/minute, ouch. I guess getting BeyondTV may fix the recording problems, and I imagine there is more control given for quality settings.