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,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Hauppauge 1120CN WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder
Customer Review: Might work with your older laptop as well...
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this tuner in preparation for a two-week long camping trip down to Denver & back.. Didn't end up using it at all (given the choice between mountain biking in Moab and watching TV, I think you can guess which one won out), but I did experiment with it quite a bit before the trip and thought I should share my experiences.
My laptop is a Fujitsu S2010 that I've had for several years now. The processor is an Athlon XP 1700+ and I was very concerned that it wouldn't be able to handle the picture at all. Turns out I had a bit of reason to be concerned, but not as much as one would think. Everything in standard def worked flawlessly; hooked up to a powered antenna in the trailer, channels came in clear and everything looked great. Better still were the 480p digital channels that the tuner picked up; several local stations broadcast their standard broadcast in digital format and these were the best in terms of picture & sound quality. Once things stepped up to the true wide-screen high def format, though, all bets were off. The audio would still come in perfectly, but watching the show was like watching a slideshow as it was only every 10th frame or so of the video that would be displayed.
In short, this unit does work exactly as advertised, but keep in mind that it may or may not work for your older laptop/desktop depending on what you want to do with it. For me, it's a keeper as I get to watch all the standard def programming now and I'm sure I'll get a new laptop by the time all broadcasts get switched over to digital.
One last note: be sure to get the latest software install kit from the Hauppauge website! I did and didn't encounter a single problem with the install or the software.
Customer Review: Nice Surprise
Summary: 4 Stars
Let me start with the negative. The documentation is dated and really doesn't tell you what or how to install the software. At least not for Vista. But it doesn't take genius to figure out the HCWSetup is the hardware drivers. Meanwhile, for those of you who like to read directions, they are listed on the Haupppage 950 support site.
Now the good stuff.
After the drivers were installed I went right to Windows Media Center and it couldn't find the tuner. Since I did not install the MCS Software Encoder that may have been the problem. I can't fault Hauppage for my hasty approach. But setting up the tuner manually was a breeze and Media Center was happily working.
The first surprise was the picture quality. I use an outside antenna and the HD TV tuner has always given me an excellent picture. But the PC image, using RGB, was even better. It probably comes down to the video card itself but the picture clarity and colors were terrific.
The second surprise was an additional item shipped with the tuner. It's a little cable that plugs into the USB Tuner and has an S-Video and Red and White RCA plugs on the other end. There's no documentation on the cable but I'm hoping it's an additional input for other video equipment. This could make it easy for me to transfer a lot of my media to the hard drive (and on to DVD.) Since there was nothing on the box or the documentation about it, maybe it was I won some kind of lottery. I've got an email into Hauppage asking them what can I do with the cable.
I never did install any other software. And with the 950 working so well, I guess I'm going to leave it alone (it's not broke so why fix it) and try to mess up some other devices.
Customer Review: Hardware is decent... software/drivers are poor at best
Summary: 3 Stars
As many others have pointed out, the hardware works fine, but the software is very poor, even after installing the updates from the website (both in XP and Vista). People rave about Hauppauge, but you would not know it from using this product. Has no problems finding channels, in fact, the included antenna is quite good and has a slightly magnetic base. Recordings take up a lot of space, as expected, but will play back on slower hardware... in fact, I had no problems getting up to 720p content to play on Athlon XP processors with no issues or visible dropped frames (even recording HD up to 720p seems to work OK on this slower hardware). However the included software encoder introduces errors into the beginning of the files, which appear to be due to missing I frames; a fundamental problem that has not been fixed by Hauppauge drivers. VLC can handle the files but most players and transcoder applications will error out. In addition because of this Windows will crash when opening the video files directory... I have not yet figured out how to solve this problem in Vista other than disabling preview. As others have pointed out using the "primary" application will solve stuttering issues with recording using the included software, but the problem will still exist with 3rd party software and media center. The wintv32 and 2000 applications need quite a bit of tweaking to get the correct aspect ratio on your monitor. Also on those applications many of the menu items are very limited. TitanTV integration is nice, in fact, seemingly the only way to reliably schedule a recording. Overall the hardware seems to be fine, but even the most up to date software and drivers are very poor compared to other HDTV offerings on the market.Customer Review: I like it
Summary: 4 Stars
My model does differ from this in that I have the HVR-950Q, which I believe means it can support QAM channels.
It installed easily and wasn't difficult to setup.
My PC has the following specs: Windows XP Professional, Intel Core2 CPU 6420 @ 2.13GHz (2 CPUs), 1024MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS video card, 305 Gb HDD, 28" ViewSonic monitor.
I live approximatley 60 miles from Orlando and I was only able to pick up 1 channel with the supplied antenna, so I connected my cable and It works as it should, picture looks good, there's no delay in the video and audio and I am overall impressed. I run Internet Explorer version 7.x and watch TV with no problems. I even had WIn Media Player playing a video, while surfing the net and watching TV, and had no problems.
One thing I've noticed is that when changing QAM channels, it takes longer to change the channel than non QAM. Usually there's a 2 second delay to actually get to the channel you want.
Also, the video recorder (DVR) uses a TON of hard drive space. 1 minute took up 50 Mb's in both recording settings.
One word of caution: I purchased a new in box HVR-850, but once I opened the box, there was a HVR-950Q with a note from the manufacturer stating the 850's were out of stock. This, in my opinion was a good thing, because I don't think the 850 supported QAM channels. Those, I've noticed have a higher quality picture.
I was looking for an option to clear up some space in my office and this enabled me to get rid of the TV. I now have the one (big) monitor, but it serves a dual purpose as the computer monitor and TV. Got the wireless keyboard and mouse and I'm ready!
Customer Review: Very Good HDTV Tuner for PC
Summary: 4 Stars
If you are looking to tune in HD, SD, or QAM from you cable hookup, then this not the product for you. If you are looking for an excellent ATSC tuner for your PC, this product works very well.
I did have some difficulty getting it working right, but I don't blame this product. I already had a PVR-150 MCE on the machine. Just had difficulties getting them both working correctly. I suspect it will install without a hitch on a PC with no other tuner already installed.
The wizard and advanced setup controls make it quite easy to get everything the way you want it. It will automatically look for all available channels though this takes a little time to complete. Picture comes in great, easy to use.
One thing to note is that this card takes a fairly decent machine to run. I've got it on an AMD64 3400+ w/ 1GB RAM and a 7600GT. When I first installed I was using integrated graphics as I hadn't yet installed the 7600GT that I recently purchased. It didn't work. After installing my 7600GT my machine didn't even boot. I ended up putting in a 500Watt power supply replacing the stock one. After that, this tuner worked great. Don't know if newer integrated graphics chips will be enough or not. I figure I pretty much running at about the minimum needed for this tuner.
All in all, a highly recommended product. Only reason I didn't give it a 5 is I believe it could be a little easier to setup and it doesn't include capabilities for HD, SD, QAM from cable. I don't have need for this, but it would make it a completely rounded product.