Hauppauge 1120CN WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder
by HAUPPAUGE
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Our Price: $299.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Hauppauge 1120CN WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder
Customer Review: Low Spec Computer Review
Summary: 5 Stars
I have an old 2.26 GHz Pentium 4 system with 1 GB RAM and a 128 MB ATI Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card. When I bought this tuner I wasn't sure if high definition content would be watchable, or too choppy. I've tried Windows Media 9 files encoded at 720p before on the system - they stuttered badly.
I'm happy to say this tuner not only picks up all of my local HD stations with the small included antenna (~15 miles to the stations), but displays true HD content smoothly. The picture looks gorgeous on my LCD monitor. I can run the picture in full-screen mode without a noticeable loss in framerate.
I do have to be careful about running other applications at the same time, however. The WinTV program seems to get higher priority on system resources than other applications - I'm watching TV smoothly now in a window, but the text I type lags slightly in Firefox.
I was curious how much of the good performance was due to my video card, which was very good in its day. Using the included 'Primary' application I turned of video hardware acceleration. The performance took a definite hit, but TV was still watchable. The framerate was probably around 15-20 fps.
Finally, unbelievably, I am able to record HD video while watching HD content. The resulting video is smooth, with only a few very slight jerks here and there, and looks fantastic. The WinTV app records at the original content resolution - not scaled down to 480p like most DVD recorders. I tried it out today for a short time on a CBS HD football broadcast. Windows Media reports the created file as having a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, a 16:9 aspect ratio, AC3 audio and MPEG2 video compression, and 27 seconds of video - all for a total file size of 59 megabytes. Considering the minimum recording specs listed for the product in analog mode, I am amazed that I can record digital HD content on my low-spec PC.
Overall, I am very impressed with the hardware performance of this tuner. The included software works, though it isn't great. The newest version of WinTV, available on the driver website, is reasonably clean and stable.
Hope this helps!
Ranjan
Customer Review: Handles analog fine, here's how to install on Windows XP SP2
Summary: 5 Stars
When piping analog cable TV into the WinTV-HVR-950 the picture looks great. I run Windows XP SP2. The Quick Installation Guide suggests (in small print) to download the latest drivers and encoders from Hauppage's website. To do this, download the file http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/software/install_cd/cd_4.6a.zip and use File Explorer to explore into the ZIP file. Copy and paste the "CD_4.6A" folder out of the ZIP file and into a folder on your hard disk, i.e. extract the contents of the ZIP file. Don't just try to use the files from inside the ZIP without extracting them or you'll get the dreaded "Drivers failed to install - INF file failed to open - click to exit" error message. Next, burn all the files inside the "CD_4.6A" folder to the root folder of a CD so that the CD has the files "Autorun.inf", "Setup.exe", etc. in its root folder - if you don't burn to a CD then in the next step you will still get the "Drivers failed to install - INF file failed to open - click to exit" error message. Now that you have a new installation CD, follow all the steps in the "Installing the WinTV-HVR-950 Windows XP driver" section of the quick-start guide. Plug the WinTV-HVR-950 into a USB port. Turn on your PC. When it is completely booted, the Found New Hardware Wizard will appear. Insert the Hauppauge Installation CD-ROM into your CD-ROM drive. If inserting the CD causes a separate installation program to start running, exit it. Back in the Found New Hardware Wizard, select No, not at this time. Click Next. Select Install software automatically. Click Next. This should install the drivers from the CD. Then run the SETUP.EXE program on the CD and just install the WinTV software, do not install the drivers again. If you have cable TV, don't just attach the coaxial cable that comes out of your wall to the WinTV-HVR-950 because the signal coming into your house is encrypted by the cable company. Instead take the coaxial cable that comes out of your cable box and goes into your TV or VCR and attach it to the WinTV-HVR-950. Now the cable box decrypts the signal before sending it out to your WinTV-HVR-950. Run the WinTV software and follow the instructions to scan for TV channels, etc. and you should be good to go.Customer Review: Lower spec machines review - Good inexpensive alternative to hardware-based tuners.
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this so that I could use it on both my desktop and laptop computers. Both machines are slightly less powerful than the required system specs demand for this device, but many features still work. If you have the recommended specs, performance issues discussed here should be no problem. For this review, I ran the software without any other applications running.
Desktop: 2.6 GHz Athlon 64, but only running 32 bit WinXP Pro.
Laptop: 1.6 GHz Sempron running WinXP Home.
Analog Video.
The analog tuner has no performance problems at all for either computer. The included antenna is quite weak, but with a stronger antenna, the picture is clear.
Digital Video.
This tuner accepts over the air ATSC signals. For standard definition digital video, there are no performance problems, but for HD the laptop is periodically choppy. On the more powerful desktop, HD is routinely quite good, but I can sense a dropped frame here and there, more frequently for 1080i.
Recording.
For the low spec machines, SD and HD digital do not record smoothly. Only the desktop had any hope of recording at all. SD can record nearly flawlessly, but about 5 times per hour there will be a few seconds of dropped video. HD recordings are simply unwatchable when recording with this lower spec machine.
Software.
The included software is quite bad. Changing channels takes several seconds, especially when switching from analog to digital channels. The software interface and controls are clunky and unintuitive. There is also a white box around the edge of the screen in full screen mode. So far I have tried the open source software, Media Portal, and it works fairly well. It sometimes has problems recognizing each sub-channel, but it is possible that this is a result of a weak broadcast signal. BeyondTV may work better, but I have not tried to use it.
The tuner is quite good, and I see no reason for problems with a machine meeting the listed hardware requirements. This review was intended for someone like me, wondering how much he or she could get out of this device with less power.
Customer Review: Alot in a little package
Summary: 5 Stars
Its pretty amazing what this little thing does. I was a little skeptical that you could get something so small (and external) to tune in HDTV, but it works. It picks up over the air HD and analog TV. I got one because I wanted to record OTA TV without the hassle of hunting for empty DVDs. Also, my DVD recorder doesn't record digital broadcasts, so I miss the HD broadcasts, and it will be obsolete in Feb 2009 anyway.
In a nutshell, this thing has a little antenna that gets suprizingly good HD reception, and with it I can watch and record TV on my PC. What more can you ask? The software that comes with it is nothing spectacular, but it is certainly acceptable. The only thing I would caution about is that your PC should exceed the minimum requirements by a considerable margin. HDTV is processor intensive. My 2.4 GHz P4 can barely handle it, and in fact drops some frames making a jerky picture. If I weren't planning on upgrading the PC soon, I would have gone for the HVR-1600, which has hardware MPEG encoding (this only has software encoding, which is why it taxes the CPU). I got the portable one because I thought I might want to take it traveling as well as use it at home. It doesn't tune in cable (the HVR-1600 does), only OTA, but it has an attachment that recieve composite and S-video, so you can do analog video capture.
Update: I've upgraded my PC since I wrote this to a quad core CPU and a integrated 780g GPU. The new PC handles HD much better than my old one. I wonder if some of the poor reviews are due to insufficient PC power rather than this product. Also, I gave up on the included software. It can record, but I can't open the files with any other software. I use GBPVR now, which is free (google it), but somewhat difficult to configure.
Customer Review: Great tuner & PVR functionality; resource intensive on some systems
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased one of these new USB tuners earlier this week and have been playing with it for about 2 days now.
For reference, I have an AMD 4000+ single-core system with 1 GB RAM and an nVidia 7800 GT video card.
Install was a breeze. Included documentation was minimal but sufficient to get you "up and running".
GREAT video quality, but taxes your CPU if you can not use video hardware acceleration. Must use a dedicated USB2 port for best results. Do NOT use a hub if you can avoid it, especially if you have a USB WLAN adapter already connected to it! Using video card hardware acceleration causes image corruption and I have not been able to resolve this issue with drivers, etc. Still working on it. However, the CPU is able to handle the load (barely) with excellent image quality. PVR function is awesome. The ability to use TitanTV scheduling is very helpful. Recorded image quality exceeds that of what is displayed "live" on my machine, at least in full screen. Works for both analog cable & ATSC (OTA HD).
The included antenna for ATSC is not very good - invest in a better, amplified antenna for best results. It would probably be great for sitting in a big city airport terminal, though.
Overall - very pleased with the purchase.
12/22/06 Update regarding hardware acceleration: I still have not been able to successfully make hardware acceleration work with the combination of an AMD 4000+ processer and nVidia 7800 GT or nvidia 7950 GX2 video cards. This does not impact standard def programming at all, but HD programming can get a little choppy using only the CPU. However, hardware acceleration works PERFECTLY on my older Dell XPS2 laptop with a 2 GHz Pentium M and an nVidia 6800 Ultra video card.