Hauppauge pvr250mce $95 shipped

[Buttfor]

I just got my card today, ordered from cnetpc.com. Of course, it is a 28552 instaed of the 32552 that was ordered. The packing slip states that it is a "Revised Sales Order", and lists the card as a Roslyn. Are they allowed to change my order for a cheaper product without my consent? I would assume no, and am quite unhappy with this. This card was to be used with MythTV, however will not be compatible. Should I request the proper card be shipped, or a partial refund if possible? To keep this card, I would have to purchase BeyondTV or whatnot to run under windows correct? Advice is appreciated from this nOOb.

 

[yhlee]

I hooked mine up last night (roslyn).. I connected my cable (the twist-on thing) directly to the card and tried using the hauppage software that comes with the driver, virtualdub and virtualVCR.. All of them have grainy images. This isn't present when i use my tv.. Any idea what i could be doing wrong?
-young

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: yhlee
I hooked mine up last night (roslyn).. I connected my cable (the twist-on thing) directly to the card and tried using the hauppage software that comes with the driver, virtualdub and virtualVCR.. All of them have grainy images. This isn't present when i use my tv.. Any idea what i could be doing wrong?
-young

You are most likely using a low bitrate/low resolution capture mode. You can change the recording quality setting anywhere from about 0.5GB/hour (for worse than VHS quality) to 5.6GB/hour (better than DVD quality).

I know you can easily do this using SageTV and BeyondTV. Not quite sure how'd do that in VirtualVCR.

 

[Pinan]

Mines stranger. Loaded the drivers no problem. The AMcap feature worked, but with no sound (no PVR software yet). I then loaded Snapstream (BYTV) 3.4.4. During the setup phase it found the card, auto setup the channels, then nothing. Would not show the video, and no sound at the final step. needless to say it didn't work at all beyond that (live TV, etc.)

Think I'll return it for another model. Spent too much time on it now as it is.

 

[Bry]

Originally posted by: Pinan
Mines stranger. Loaded the drivers no problem. The AMcap feature worked, but with no sound (no PVR software yet). I then loaded Snapstream (BYTV) 3.4.4. During the setup phase it found the card, auto setup the channels, then nothing. Would not show the video, and no sound at the final step. needless to say it didn't work at all beyond that (live TV, etc.)

OK, finally got the drivers to install. I had to manually copy the hcw*.sys files into my windows\system32\drivers directory for it to work.

When I do "auto-discover" channels with Snapstream, the channels discover correctly. When I unplug the cable, it finds nothing, when I plug it in, it finds the right channels. But I don't get any TV video or audio. What's wrong?

 

[RadioUdotCom]

Originally posted by: Pinan
Mines stranger. Loaded the drivers no problem. The AMcap feature worked, but with no sound (no PVR software yet). I then loaded Snapstream (BYTV) 3.4.4. During the setup phase it found the card, auto setup the channels, then nothing. Would not show the video, and no sound at the final step. needless to say it didn't work at all beyond that (live TV, etc.)

Think I'll return it for another model. Spent too much time on it now as it is.

I got the same exact behavior you described.
I already have an RMA number to reutrn it for the right model.

I may go the extra step and install a new HD to my machine and put a clean load of XP on and see if I can get it working.

 

[Pinan]

Yup. We all suffer from the same Hauppage disease, LOL. Oh well. Next deal.

I'm waiting for my RMA.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: Bry

Originally posted by: Pinan
Mines stranger. Loaded the drivers no problem. The AMcap feature worked, but with no sound (no PVR software yet). I then loaded Snapstream (BYTV) 3.4.4. During the setup phase it found the card, auto setup the channels, then nothing. Would not show the video, and no sound at the final step. needless to say it didn't work at all beyond that (live TV, etc.)

OK, finally got the drivers to install. I had to manually copy the hcw*.sys files into my windows\system32\drivers directory for it to work.

When I do "auto-discover" channels with Snapstream, the channels discover correctly. When I unplug the cable, it finds nothing, when I plug it in, it finds the right channels. But I don't get any TV video or audio. What's wrong?

wow. I installed it, fired up the pc and went throught the hardware and software(BTV) install process flawlessly.

 

[Pinan]

Yeah yeah...rub it in.

Wish I could say the same.

 

[uwannawhat]

What build revision are you using?

Try the Build 3.4.1217 The latest upgrade to 1334 wont' work for me.

Running XP PRO with the drivers installed from the link provided in this thread.

Here's the direct link to the older version of the BTV Software.

Link

 

[Pinan]

I was using the newest, 3.4.4. Heck. Guess I'll give these a shot.

Thanks for linking those uwannawhat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adding this:

Oh well, no go. Thanks for your efforts. Same results.

 

[huesmann]

Originally posted by: Pinan
Mines stranger. Loaded the drivers no problem. The AMcap feature worked, but with no sound (no PVR software yet). I then loaded Snapstream (BYTV) 3.4.4. During the setup phase it found the card, auto setup the channels, then nothing. Would not show the video, and no sound at the final step. needless to say it didn't work at all beyond that (live TV, etc.)

Think I'll return it for another model. Spent too much time on it now as it is.

I got similar results when I installed it in some of my other computers. One wouldn't even recognize the card, like it didn't even know it was there.

 

[stingygrrl]

I read thru this thread am an pretty confused now. I bought the retail PVR250 (I had an expiring gift cert, so I said, "why not!!") - it's got the CX23416-12 chip on it and the white label says 32032 REV B310. So what does that mean?

Does all this discussion about roselyn adn blackbird only matter if you are using linux?

Also, it came bundled with Titan TV (titantv.com) which is a free PVR solution that downloads schedules into the Hauppage scheduler. What's so great about Sagetv that is worth buying it (assuming you don't have multople tuners).

Thanks

 

[iwearnosox]

Originally posted by: stingygrrl
I read thru this thread am an pretty confused now. I bought the retail PVR250 (I had an expiring gift cert, so I said, "why not!!") - it's got the CX23416-12 chip on it and the white label says 32032 REV B310. So what does that mean?

Does all this discussion about roselyn adn blackbird only matter if you are using linux?

Also, it came bundled with Titan TV (titantv.com) which is a free PVR solution that downloads schedules into the Hauppage scheduler. What's so great about Sagetv that is worth buying it (assuming you don't have multople tuners).

Thanks

You have the retail boxed pvr 250, you're all set. Don't worry about roslyn or blackbird, these are cards that are different than yours.

 

[psxjunky]

Sifl is right ... you have a PVR250 (not the PVR250MCE) and not a Roslyn (which uses the BlackBird design). So don't worry about any Roslyn/Blackbird discussion.

To answer your second question - yes, you can do scheduled TV recording using WinTV 2000 and TitanTV, but if you have ever used a real PVR (TiVo, ReplayTV etc) you will very soon figure out that the WinTV/TitanTV solution is pretty lame and unreliable.

I don't want to bias you and since you already have it, go ahead and try it out for a couple days. If you get frustrated with it, then give a real PC based PVR like SageTV or BeyondTV a try (both have trial versions available. although you can't yet try out SageTV 2.0 ... which is a much more improved product over SageTV 1.4 ... unless you are a registered user). Both SageTV and BeyondTV are much more feature rich programs that makes it feasible to use them as a standalone PVR solution.

 

[Jeraden]

Just a side question about sage/beyondtv. their websites don't really give you a very full idea of how they work. How robust are they compared to a tivo? Do they do season pass type stuff - tracking programs and not recording duplicates? Do they record suggested shows based on your previous likes/dislikes?

 

[Bry]

Originally posted by: huesmann

Originally posted by: Pinan
Mines stranger. Loaded the drivers no problem. The AMcap feature worked, but with no sound (no PVR software yet). I then loaded Snapstream (BYTV) 3.4.4. During the setup phase it found the card, auto setup the channels, then nothing. Would not show the video, and no sound at the final step. needless to say it didn't work at all beyond that (live TV, etc.)

Think I'll return it for another model. Spent too much time on it now as it is.

I got similar results when I installed it in some of my other computers. One wouldn't even recognize the card, like it didn't even know it was there.

Dammit, I finally got it to work by reinstalling the drivers and uninstalling Snapstream. Now I'm in the same state -- AMCap works without sound, Snapstream doesn't work at all. If anybody figures out how to get out of this situation, let me know. If I bought a non-Roslyn PVR-250, would I be having any of these problems?

 

[MrAnudo]

I bought my card from Zbuy also... I've downloaded the drivers for the card from shspvr.com... however I cannot get the audio to work. Any ideas? Or better yet... has someone got a guide written up for this Roslyn board for an install under WinXP?

 

[Pinan]

As you can see from the several posts above, we all have no audio. I looked everywhere to no avail. Returning it today for a standard PVR 250.

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: Jeraden
Just a side question about sage/beyondtv. their websites don't really give you a very full idea of how they work. How robust are they compared to a tivo? Do they do season pass type stuff - tracking programs and not recording duplicates? Do they record suggested shows based on your previous likes/dislikes?

As far as SageTV is concerned, yes to all your questions above. Most answers are yes for BeyondTV too ... but I have only used their trail version and had some stability issues. Other members here have successfully used it thoug, so your best bet is to try it out for yourself.

I have been using SageTV since last november and it has not crashed a SINGLE time yet. I have been a dedicated TiVo user for about three years before starting with SageTV, and after using it for just a couple weeks, I was so impressed that I haven't touched the TiVo ever since. The TiVo is still humming along in the background, but that is mostly to be used as a backup.

SageTV does pretty much everything that TiVo does ... and more. It downloads the TV guide data for the next 14 days. Lets you do TiVo season pass type recording (they call it the "Favorites"). Doesn't record duplicate programs. They also have a feature called "Intelligent Recording" which is just like TiVo Suggestions. You can turn it on or off. You can mark programs as don't like to control intelligent recording.

The currently released version of SageTV is 1.4, which is a very solid PVR but the interface is ugly. SageTV 2.0 is in public beta testing mode right now and close to final release (they have already released the second release candidate). The UI is vastly improved in SageTV 2.0. Unfortunately, you need to be a registered customer of Sage 1.4 in order to get Sage 2.0 ... but if you are looking for a solid PC based PVR solution, you won't regret buying SageTV for a moment

 

[psxjunky]

Just to clarify thing ... I do not work for Frey Technologies (the developer of SageTV), or Hauppauge or SnapStream ... or any other company that does anything with HTPC stuff. I am simply an HTPC enthusiast and my endorsements for any software or hardware product is purely based on my personal experience I do NOT gain anything by endorsing any product ... other than the mental satisfaction of helping out another fellow HTPC enthusiast

There ... I feel better now

 

[stingygrrl]

thanks for the info. sorry to post this in your HW thread.

I tried the titantv/wintv2000 combo and it was ok. Then after a couple days, wintv2000 would start, bu tnot load completely, even manually. So I reinstalled it, but that didn't help.

I downloaded sagetv and my friest unattended recording came out black with audio. I know the drivers were ok, because I've been recording all week. Anyway, I reinstalled everything and did a few test burns and it seems ok now.

I never used Tivo or anything like that before, and am still not sure what sage has that the others don't. ie, I'm sure I'm missing out of something, but don't know what it is!

titan and sage both have search, repeat scheduling, sleep or run in the background modes.
my sage trial says 10 days even though they say 15 on the website/ do you know a target release date for sage2.0?

maybe someone can buzz me by PM to discuss this.

 

[RossMAN]

According to UPS my PVR-250 & Beyond TV combo should arrive TOMORROW.

But I still need to find my WD 120GB then do a clean install of XP Home.

I can't wait!

 

[psxjunky]

stingygrrl: There is no official date for Sage 2.0 release. All the release candidates have been near perfect, so if I had to make a guess I'd say it should be released in the next month or two at the latest. Frey is really good at not releasing half baked products out the door, so I wouldn't be surprised if they release a couple more release candidates before going gold.

The SageTV forum is THE best place for discussion of Sage specific issues (both technical and non-technical). There are some really great people there who will help solve most technical issues even before official tech support gets a chance to reply.

There are many extra features in Sage that makes it a more full fledged PVR solution that TitanTV/WinTV. Here are just a couple ---

- Ability to group recorded shows in different ways (e.g. all "24" episodes in one virtual folder)
- Ability to look ahead to see what is going to be recorded in the next couple days
- Multiple tuner support and ability to view recording schedule for multiple tuners
- While a show is being played, you have various different ways to skip to different parts of the show
- Integrated Picture, Video, Music library
- If you have multiple HTPCs at home, you can schedule recording over the network
- Sage client allows you to have all your recordings in a central location and view them from another PC
- Ability to use software filters and scalers for better TV out quality
- Ability to control overscan when outputting to a TV (very important for some ATI card users)
- Stability ... my HTPC with 4 tuners and running Sage is on 24x7 and goes on for weeks at a time. It would go on longer unless I had to restart for those Windows Updates

There are many more but I'd highly suggest checking out the Sage forums to get a better feel

 

[RossMAN]

If a Sage TV 2.0 trial is released to the general public, I'm signing up