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: Cool device for cable channels, struck out with HD
Summary: 3 Stars
Bought this item yesterday and am pretty impressed. I tried to use the small HD antenna that came with it but I was only able to grab 5 UHF channels (mostly static and in spanish) and two HD channels (one in spanish). Now maybe if I get a better antenna I will have better results but no such luck with the one included. I live about 40 miles out of NYC so I thought I would have more luck. So I decided to run my cable antenna through it instead. Now I get about 80 basic cable (no HBO for example) channels playing on my computer. The display is pretty good, a little grainy but thats OK. You can either view and record with provided software or you can just use Microsoft Media Center (I have Windows Vista). I like the DVR on Media Center much better than the provided software. So now the cool thing is I can burn shows onto DVD or transfer them to a portable video player. For $70 bucks it's very cool. I might step up and buy a better HD antenna to see if I have any better luck.
Customer Review: Amazing!
Summary: 5 Stars
I attached the WinTV-HVR-950 tuner device to my Time Warner cable box and an open USB port on my PC, installed the included software, and off I went to TV on my PC! I receive extremely high quality picture and sound on all non-HDTV Time Warner cable channels (be sure to set the tuner software to Channel 3, and use the Time Warner remote to change channels).
An added plus is that the small telescoping antenna supplied with the tuner receives all local HDTV channels with perfect picture and sound. I live about 15 miles from the transmitters in Columbus, OH.
The personal video recorder ("PVR") also works flawlessly, as advertised, however, this means little to me. I've been unable to get the Software for scheduling PVR recording to operate properly on my Windows XP machine but, who cares? I bought the tuner to watch TV on my PC and it delivers beautifully in every respect. A real winner! Turns a PC into a TV (and HDTV!) for cheap, cheap, cheap!!
Customer Review: I now have a 100 inch HDTV and pay no monthly charges.
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first saw this, I thought there was no way that little thing could put HD-TV on my tablet PC. In my apartment, I already have an old LCD projector, which I got pretty cheap, projecting a 100" image on a screen. This little device allows me to watch free HDTV on a 100" screen for a very reasonalbe price. I was originally going to buy a dedicated media center computer and to put in a more expensive hardware encoding card to get HDTV on my projector, ( even this would have been cheaper than getting an HDTV half the size.) I thought I'd give it a shot, and it works pretty much flawlessly. I am glad I gave it a chance. I even got rid of my tv in my bedroom, and now watch nothing but HD. Just make sure you have a newer laptop to run this, to get good quality, you will need core duo and a dedicated graphics card of some sort.
In summary, for less than 100 dollars, I added a 100" HDTV to my living room with no monthly fees.
Customer Review: Didn't quite meet my expectations
Summary: 3 Stars
All I wanted was a ATSC tuner to use with Windows Media Center 2005. I am using two of them, actually. I'm not using the software, nor have I tried the antenna that came with it.
It does an okay job, but I think the ATSC tuner is not picking up the signal very well on some local stations. I'm using an antenna in my attic that splits between this and my TV. My TV picks up the ATSC station just fine (so its not an antenna/signal strength issue), but I can't get a reliable signal when I tune to the same station using this device.
Also Media Center can't display the signal stregth for some reason. For every ATSC station that it finds it shows zero signal strength. My TV tuner reports mid 80% range on most.
I've not even tried the NTSC tuner abiltiy so I can't comment on that.
Bottom line with regard to the ATSC ability, I think it does okay, but not great.
Customer Review: Needs a fast computer with good graphics
Summary: 3 Stars
The product documentation mentions needing a fast computer with good graphics. Take this seriously. It works OK on my 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 system with an nVidia 7600 GS graphics card. It does not work OK on my laptop (dual core Intel 1.8 GHz with integrated graphics). I think the graphics card and drivers matter a lot. The HVR-950 may not work well even on new computers if they have low-end graphics cards.
When it does work, the HDTV picture is clear and of good quality.
The software is not as stable as that of other Hauppauge products I have tried, in particular the PVR-150.
There appears to be a new version of the hardware out. The box refers to it as the HVR 950 version 2.3-us. The driver refers to HVR-980. The HVR-950 beta drivers on the Hauppauge web site did not work with the new hardware. All in all, this product appears to be a work in progress.