Hauppage WinTV-PVR-250 $126 plus shipping

[MisterE]

Greetings, all. I've been in the market for a MPEG-2 hardware encoder card, and have been eying the Hauppage WinTV-PVR-250 PCI Personal Video Recorder. Stumbled across it today at Directron for the fairly low price of $126 plus shipping. That is the lowest price that I've seen for this card, and I couldn't resist. I've got a couple of VHS tapes that I need to dump to MPEG-2 (I'm going to do this in Windows), and then I'm moving the card to a linux-based PVR box that I'm building that will be running Freevo. Things will go well, I hope.

E.

 

[scarfase99]

that's where i got it. not a phenomenal price, but definitely very nice.

be aware however, that the New version of Windows Media Center (which uses Hauppauge's PVR 250 card) will use a Radio button feature which is only with the PVR-350 (not worth $50 extra bux IMHO, but just letting everyone know)

 

[PuckMan]

Tha Hauppage web site appears to have a conflict on whether or not this board supports hardware compression. The feature comparison page states that the PVR-350 has FM and hardware MPEG, the PVR-250 does not have either (hence the reason the retail price difference is $100.00 more. On the link provided above, the ad for the PVR-250 states that it has hardware MPEG. So, anyone know which is correct?

 

[scarfase99]

i know for a fact the 250 does hardware encoding, not sure about decoding but i would assume so.

 

[PuckMan]

Thanks!

 

[gaidin123]

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/products.htm#pvr

This shows that the PVR-250 does Hardware MPEG encoding, and Software MPEG decoding whereas the PVR-350 does both in hardware. It also shows that the PVR-350 has Svideo and composite output but mentions nothing about the PVR-250's outputs.

Gaidin

 

[luv2chill]

I just ordered this card today (rolling my own MCE) from amazon. com for $134.99 with free shipping. I don't know how much directron's shipping costs are but amazon may be a better deal for some. There aren't any coupons out right now (that I know of) but I had a couple of vividence gift certificates that helped bring the total down.

Amazon Link

Can't wait to get the machine built!

l2c

Edit: and yes the previous poster is correct. The 250 does hardware encoding but software decoding. The 350 does both encoding and decoding in hardware. However, if you want this card for XP MCE purposes, MCE (in its current iteration) will not take advantage of hardware decoding. The only other benefit I see is FM radio in the next version of MCE, but I don't believe it has been established whether or not MCE's Radio feature will even work with the 350's FM tuner. Probably will, but I don't think it's known for sure yet. The 350 is quite a bit pricier and harder to find. Even ebay doesn't have them all the time.

 

[MisterMe]

I got mine from CompUSA a couple weeks ago when they had it for $99 after a $30 rebate...

 

[PuckMan]

Originally posted by: luv2chill
I just ordered this card today (rolling my own MCE) from amazon. com for $134.99 with free shipping. I don't know how much directron's shipping costs are but amazon may be a better deal for some. There aren't any coupons out right now (that I know of) but I had a couple of vividence gift certificates that helped bring the total down. Amazon Link Can't wait to get the machine built! l2c Edit: and yes the previous poster is correct. The 250 does hardware encoding but software decoding. The 350 does both encoding and decoding in <U>software</U>. However, if you want this card for XP MCE purposes, MCE (in its current iteration) will not take advantage of hardware decoding. The only other benefit I see is FM radio in the next version of MCE, but I don't believe it has been established whether or not MCE's Radio feature will even work with the 350's FM tuner. Probably will, but I don't think it's known for sure yet. The 350 is quite a bit pricier and harder to find. Even ebay doesn't have them all the time.

----------------------------------------------------
I think you meant Hardware.

 

[luv2chill]

Doh! Fixed

l2c

 

[PuckMan]

Alright, I got currious just how cheap I could find this. Frys (Outpust.com) has them for $149.95 with a $30.00 rebate, thus, $119.95. You can pick them up locally and avoid any shipping...or don't and pay shipping. Good luck!

Here is the link...

Link to Fry's page

 

[sxr7171]

How is everyone liking this card? Is it compatible with Dscaler?

 

[subpar]

I'm interested in this card. However, I have heard the picture quality is not too hot and there is no raw output of video to *.avi. The hardware compression is enticing, but the quality issue is definitely holding this one back for me.

 

[Chadder007]

Man that Freevo looks kinda cool. I wish I knew how to use Linux. Ive tried it twice and gave up. Im to Windows minded. :/

 

[Mattdogg02]

Originally posted by: Chadder007
Man that Freevo looks kinda cool. I wish I knew how to use Linux. Ive tried it twice and gave up. Im to Windows minded. :/

Check out this... for windows based systems I believe... http://www.myhtpc.net

 

[twobrain]

isnt mythtv.org suppose to be better than freevo right now?

 

[twobrain]

Originally posted by: subpar
I'm interested in this card. However, I have heard the picture quality is not too hot and there is no raw output of video to *.avi. The hardware compression is enticing, but the quality issue is definitely holding this one back for me.

what review said the video quality wasnt good?

 

[scarfase99]

picture quality is not as good as the actual tv itself (im analog only, not digital cable)

but it's the best i've seen from a tv tuner, and i've tried the AIW 8500dv & a WinTV regular

 

[PuckMan]

Picked mine up. Here are my observations:

1) Picture quality blows away the product that NewEgg is selling (the something 2000?) for $58.00
2) The Picture quality is very good on my Dell UltraSharp LCD, you MUST set the resolution up in the setup dialog to match the size you view, if you set the picture up for 640x480 and stratch it to some other size then you will lose quality.
3) The GUI is not fully intuitive, for example, if I press pause on the remote then I have to wait about 10 seconds for some pause menu to come up and then have the thing pause. After reading the manual, you have to "enable pause mode" before you ever hit pause.
4) The replay part does not work well at all. There are cases when you can't jump forward and cases when you can't jump back. Looks like a bug to me.
5) When you record something it will launch the TV window. If you close the window...you lose the recording without warning!

That said...it works better than any of the other 4 products I tried. If they can fix the above it would be a great board!

 

[twobrain]

where did you pick it up from

supposedly compusa had $30 rebate a few weeks ago for it, 100 AR

outpost has a $30 rebate for it

supposedly officemax has it now for $100 AR text

wonder if amazon will have 30$ rebate soon

 

[PuckMan]

I went to my local Fry's and picked it up for $119 after the $30.00 rebate. I may have to do a price match to get it down to $100.00! Thanks for the tip.

 

[twobrain]

went to omax couldnt find it, ahh

Text

amazon reduced the price to 128.24, it was 135 something before

 

[wangeth]

CompUSA has it for $99 AR (it's in another thread). BTW, this card paired with SageTV software (link) is an incredible PVR/ReplayTV/TIVO -like product. SageTV is soooo much better than the software it comes with.

 

[mee987]

ive had this card since around february, the quality is sweet. its true that you cant do raw avi encoding, but i usually just cap to dvd quality (mpeg2, ~6-8mbit i think) then use gknot to encode 2-pass xvid or divx. the software that comes with it isnt the greatest, but once you get used to it its not so bad. but while im here, does anyone know of some 3rd party apps that can capture from the hardware encoder?

 

[vladgur]

Originally posted by: wangeth
CompUSA has it for $99 AR (it's in another thread). BTW, this card paired with SageTV software (link) is an incredible PVR/ReplayTV/TIVO -like product. SageTV is soooo much better than the software it comes with.

Yep CUSA has it for 99AR, but I think im gonna go to frys and PM the Compusa price because Frys also has the $30 rebate and frys doesnt have the 15% restocking fee that Compusa does...