TV Tuner software for WinXP?

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J

jaydee

Diamond Member
May 6, 2000
4,500
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Anyone know of good TV tuner software for free or cheap that I can use with my Hauppauge 850 TV Tuner? I just got the tuner and fiddling with Hauppage's software with multiple antennae's (trying to get it to work with ATSC), I couldn't get it to work properly on the system in signature (few channels came in, very slow, crashed often). I installed the drivers on my wife's laptop, a lowly Turon X2 @2.0 Ghz, but with Windows 7, and with Windows Media Center everything fired up and worked pretty good, other than being choppy due to the processor (really high CPU utilzation).

Short of buying Windows 7 for my main PC, what other software is out there that I can try? I'm trying to hold off on an OS upgrade until Windows 8. If I can't find anything that will work with XP, I'm probably going to try messing around with ubuntu and mythTV or Me TV. Thanks.
 
W

wirednuts

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2007
7,121
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must be doing something wrong. watching OTA HDTV takes VERY little cpu power, as the signal is uncompressed. i can easily watch any local channel in HD on my asus netbook, which has a mighty n270 atom single core...
 
B

Binky

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,046
4
81
Try it with a powered USB hub, a larger antenna, and be sure you're using a USB 2.0 port. Look around to see if your tuner can play through VLC (many can).

The system in your sig can easily play an ATSC signal.
 
M

manko

Golden Member
May 27, 2001
1,846
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I have one of their USB tuners on a dual-boot machine and it works fine in XP with their WinTV software. It also works well with the built-in Media Center in Windows 7. Changing channels isn't instant like the old analog tuners, but otherwise it works fine and and my locals come in just fine.

You might check their forum for similar issues (UK site, but the community also supports US/Canada hardware):

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/forum/forumdisplay.php?83-WinTV-v7.0-ATSC-QAM-Analog-(Windows-7-Vista-XP)
 
Last edited:
tweakboy

tweakboy

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2010
9,517
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www.hammiestudios.com
Try DScaler Its free and you will get better picture then the stock software it comes with. It doesnt have DVR , but it will bring in good picture. You have to set it up a bit. Let me know. thx gg and gl :awe:

Also

When I used DScaler that was 10 years ago soo new version must be very mature.... gl


jaydee said:
Anyone know of good TV tuner software for free or cheap that I can use with my Hauppauge 850 TV Tuner? I just got the tuner and fiddling with Hauppage's software with multiple antennae's (trying to get it to work with ATSC), I couldn't get it to work properly on the system in signature (few channels came in, very slow, crashed often). I installed the drivers on my wife's laptop, a lowly Turon X2 @2.0 Ghz, but with Windows 7, and with Windows Media Center everything fired up and worked pretty good, other than being choppy due to the processor (really high CPU utilzation).

Short of buying Windows 7 for my main PC, what other software is out there that I can try? I'm trying to hold off on an OS upgrade until Windows 8. If I can't find anything that will work with XP, I'm probably going to try messing around with ubuntu and mythTV or Me TV. Thanks.
Click to expand...
 
J

jaydee

Diamond Member
May 6, 2000
4,500
4
81
DVBviewer doesn't look like it supports my tuner and I don't see it listing compatibility with US ATSC signals. I need the DVR feature, so DScaler is out. I did some google searching on VLC and it seemed like a lot of work.

I'll try re-installing Hauppauge's bundled software "WinTV" on the system in my sig with WinXP and see if I can work it out.

I'm not going to try to figure out choppiness/audio sync problems with the laptop, I bought the tuner for my main system, that's what I need it to work on.

Thanks all, I'll let you know how it goes.
 
B

Binky

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,046
4
81
For what its worth, Win7 media center ("7MC") is very simple and polished. My experiences with multimedia on XP (including media center 2005) were not great. The DVR functionality of 7MC is simple, effective, and the TV guide listings are totally free.
 
tweakboy

tweakboy

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2010
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www.hammiestudios.com
Binky said:
For what its worth, Win7 media center ("7MC") is very simple and polished. My experiences with multimedia on XP (including media center 2005) were not great. The DVR functionality of 7MC is simple, effective, and the TV guide listings are totally free.
Click to expand...


He can't use that on XP right ?
 
J

jaydee

Diamond Member
May 6, 2000
4,500
4
81
wirednuts said:
must be doing something wrong. watching OTA HDTV takes VERY little cpu power, as the signal is uncompressed. i can easily watch any local channel in HD on my asus netbook, which has a mighty n270 atom single core...
Click to expand...

I just double checked on the laptop last night. Both cores under 10% utlization at little more idle. Turned on Win7 TV and both cores went up to 70-80% and stayed there as long as the live TV was streaming. Immediately after I shut down the application, both cores went back to under 10%. For the heck of it, I tried Hauppauge's software on the laptop and with the same antennea in the same location, I couldn't get as many channels (notably, CBS). For some reason the channels that both applications could pull in (NBC and ABC), Hauppauge software played smoothly, while Win7MC was choppy.

Here's another question. If/when I do get this working, is there enough bandwidth over USB 2.0 to record directly to an external 5400 RPM hard drive? Or will I have to mount a large internal HD via SATA?
 
Modelworks

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
16,240
7
76
USB 2.0 is going to have issues with video streaming of ATSC depending on the source.
There are two kinds of USB tv tuners. One contains a tuner and streams the content to the host pc and the host cpu compresses and then records the content to disk. The second kind takes the content from the tuner , compresses it using mpeg4 and then sends that over USB allowing the host cpu to only have to save the content to the drive.

For a laptop you really need a USB tuner with a hardware encoder inside the USB device.

The only hauppauge external tuner I see on their site that has a hardware encoder is this one :
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr1950.html
 
J

jaydee

Diamond Member
May 6, 2000
4,500
4
81
Binky said:
He mentioned the possibility of upgrading to 7 in the OP.
Click to expand...

I'm going to try fiddling with Hauppauge again on my main PC, then try VLC.

Unless I fall into a copy of Win7 for $50 or less somehow, I'm going to try Ubuntu next. Don't want to shell out over $100 for Win7, when Win8 is ~10 months away, possible a publically available RC even sooner...
 
J

jaydee

Diamond Member
May 6, 2000
4,500
4
81
Updating an old thread, I never got it working on XP with various software. I installed Win8 RP with Media Center, and it works awesome, great signals on all stations, no special drivers. Just in time for football season :) Now just need to figure out the best handbrake settings for compression.

I guess my next decision will be whether to buy Win8 Pro w/Media Center for $40 in a few months, or Win7 for at least double the price.

Thanks for the replies all.
 
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