Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1600 for $70 after MIR

[BraveSirRobbin]

Circuit City.com is offering the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1600 for $70 after MIR and free shipping.

Watch hi-definition ATSC digital TV on your PC!
Analog cable TV, too!

Dual format TV receiver for your PC. Watch ATSC digital TV or analog cable TV, in a window or full screen.

Watch and record all ATSC formats, including the highest definition 1080i format!

Includes TV scheduler, the new Hauppauge remote control and IR blaster to control satellite and cable TV set top boxes.

Details HERE.

FYI, I also noticed people recommending the Philips Silver Sensor Indoor HDTV Antenna for $25 (don't know if this is a good deal or not).

Does anyone have any experience with this card (especially using it with Windows MCE 2005)?

 

[CollinR]

No support for unencrypted QAM, not required for everyone but many want it.


EDIT: Still for $70... It's worth it, most of you guys use Windows and I don't know of any frontends that support QAM in Windows.

 

[Jim Doolittle]

Going to go pick one up right now. Thanks.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Hey, keep us informed of how it works out Jim!

As far as QAM, that is the HDTV spec over cable correct (they modulate it over their regular signal, not an expert on this)?

I guess I would worry about specific compatibility even if it did support this. Wouldn't mind someone educating me on this when they get a chance!

 

[WayneW]

Everything you never wanted to know about QAM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAM

Everything you need to know about QAM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAM_tuner

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

I know "what" it is technically (looked at that Wiki before). I was more interested in "if" it worked well (i.e. a tuner card) with a cable service running HD/digital signals.

 

[Jim Doolittle]

Working fine although I misunderstood and thought that it had dual tuners allowing viewing while recording. So, it is a good deal but not a great deal. I had it record a show via XBox 360 acting as MCE Extender and will check resulting quality soon.

 

[Jim Doolittle]

My final thoughts are that the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1600 is OK but nothing to brag about. Maybe I should have looked for some reviews but figured at $70 it would do a decent job.

I have been looking for a single solution for viewing and watching TV via MCE. Before I purchased the Hauppauge card, I had no tuner card so I recorded TV with a ReplayTV unit (similar to TiVo). The family most often watches TV on our older Sony. For some shows though, we want better sound so we watch TV via the ReplayTV which will provide Dolby Pro Logic sound. It is a trade off though because the picture is slightly worse than watching TV directly. This is because you are essentially watching recorded TV.

This Hauppauge card also has a slightly worse picture than watching TV directly. However, it may actually be a little better than my ReplayTV. A major downer is that sound is only stereo.

Note that my comments are with regards to analog TV and both the Hauppauge card and the ReplayTV are set to record with their highest quality setting. I have not tried digital yet.

So, I guess I would not recommend this card. What I want is a good card for MCE that will provide best sound signal that source provides. In my case, I have analog cable and most channels are Dolby Pro Logic. The card also has to provide very little or no degradation in quality relative to the original source when viewing/recording (at highest setting).

Does anyone know what CircuitCity's return policy is? I wouldn't mind keeping the card as a second but I only have to slots left in PC and one is PCIe. Plus, that $70 would go a long way towards the purchase of something better.

 

[CollinR]

I have been looking for a single solution for viewing and watching TV via MCE. Before I purchased the Hauppauge card, I had no tuner card so I recorded TV with a ReplayTV unit (similar to TiVo). The family most often watches TV on our older Sony. For some shows though, we want better sound so we watch TV via the ReplayTV which will provide Dolby Pro Logic sound. It is a trade off though because the picture is slightly worse than watching TV directly. This is because you are essentially watching recorded TV.

...Snip...

I have not tried digital yet.

Get your digital going, digital TV doesn't need a hardware encoder, once it's up you should be able to use both tuners at the same time. You just can't watch while recording 2 analog channel or 2 digital streams (kinda gets deep quick).

You can tweak all the other Hauppauge cards I haven't seen tweaks for this one specifically but in the past their config has been very simular. I don't think there will be much for the digital side but you can dramatically improve the analog picture quality. I think the thing defaults to something like 3500 kb/s I have had mine (PVR250 878 chipset) up to 9mb/s CBR. Really though 6000kb/s-9000kb/s variable has been a sweetspot for quality vs. space consumed.

Might also look at FFDshow, you can process the video in realtime, be careful though it can be a resource hog.

 

[Jim Doolittle]

CollinR,

I think I will try to work with the card. I am now using it to watch TV on PC in my Workshop/Control Room/Weight Room. My original TV was 13" and my computer monitor is 17" so that is an upgrade. When working at the PC, TV in a window will be nice. Never bothered with that before.

I will investigate tweaks. Maybe that will make all the difference.

 

[CollinR]

Bad news.


That card is based on a CX23418 encoder so it probably won't work with any of those tweaks.


Be very careful with the regestry hacks as send a BS parameter to a hardware encoder can lock your machine up good. Sometimes you gotta fix it from a boot disk.


The MCE150 (~same money~) or better the MCE500 (2 analog tuners, 878 encoders, $200) might be better for you if you aren't going to be using the digital side.



Now that said... CX23418 could be the greatest thing since sliced bread, it's new enough that not too many know much about it. It might be a highly configurable chip, it might take years to really get supported.

 

[Jim Doolittle]

I am going to try to get an HD OTA antenna today but am not too optimistic about getting it on SuperBowl Sunday. Then again... might not be too many people familiar with it as I bet the majority rely on HD via satellite/cable. I should be OK being close to Chicago.

Another downside to the WinTV-HVR 1600 is that the included remote is only good for satellite/cable set top boxes and does not work with MCE. I got a MCE remote for my XBox 360 but I was hoping to have a remote for when I run MCE locally on my MCE PC.

Yesterday, I rearranged so NordicTrack faces my "Control Center" PC and watched TV through MCE (and this is where a MCE remote would be very handy). Much better that way than using the bundled WinTV200. I have Outlook running on my PC with HomeSeer announcing incoming email. To do that, I run ClickYes to get around M$ security solution. The Outlook security popup is a fraction of a second and is not visible but yet it forces WinTV2000 to exit full screen mode. Very annoying! MCE does not do this.

So, I am still weighing Pros and Cons but it looks like the ultimate verdict will rely upon my experience when connecting HD OTA antenna. That would give the family the ability to record three programs: one analog via WinTV, one digital via WinTV, and one analog via ReplayTV.

Will post later regarding digital results.

 

[TonyNo]

Regarding getting CBS OTA... They are the toughest to get in Chicago. I get ALL other channels, no problem. CBS2DT is another story! I'll be in the attic shortly looking for reflections that I can lock on to...

 

[Jim Doolittle]

Went to RadioShack and bought an OTA HD antenna for $30. After digital test, I would say the card is a definite keeper. I make that assessment only after viewing live HD through MCE both on local PC and via XBox 360 as MCE extender. I have yet to test recording of digital and will also test simultaneous recording of analog and digital signals.

The digital signal does produce Dolby Digital audio through my XBox / Sony Receiver (with auto audio signal decode On). The analog signal produces stereo only although, as I mentioned earlier, most channels have Dolby Pro Logic. My Sony receiver can be set to simulate Dolby Pro Logic and does a pretty decent job so I guess I will go that route for channels that I cannot get in HD via the OTA antenna.

Now, the digital setup did not go as smooth as the analog. The WinTV software (I removed the bundled CD version and installed latest from Hauppauge) found the channels OK but audio/video was jumpy. Scanned AVSForum and found other posts about CPU usage when viewing diagital but my CPU was not too bad even with HomeSeer running on same PC. Another post suggested not using full hardware acceleration and that helped when I used WinTV2000 to view picture but that messed up local MCE.

So, I returned to full hardware acceleration and instead tried setting OpenGL Optimization Preference from "Quality" to "Performance" and it worked! Didn't read anywhere about that, just experimented. I suspect that there are other tweaks to my video card to further improve local viewing.

Anyway, my 8 year old daughter with a 102 temperature is now happy (as she can be) watching AirBud (she plays basketball) in HDTV. My only issue at the moment is that the picture is not full screen on our old 27" Sony TV (new TV comeing later ). 16X9 DTV channels fit entire width of screen but the 4X3 are only as high as the "9". There is a setting that I am likely missing.

Also, still unable to get CBS HD but have not given up yet...

All-in-all, a good buy for $70...

 

[Jim Doolittle]

Spoke too soon. My video card settings may still need some changes because picture is still choppy locally. We are able to watch HD on XBox 360 MCE perfectly and can watch analog simultaneously on MCE locally. If I try to tune to a digital channel locally, MCE warns me that I will affect another MCE unit which makes sense.

Interestingly, when HD is remote and analog local, analog local is now stuttering. CPU is still low.