Hauppauge WinTV-GO TV Tuner/ Video Capture Card-FREE SHIPPING!

[k1114]

This is not really a PVR type card - while it is techincally possible, the results won't be good. What this card IS great for is desktop TV viewing. Use the hauppauge drivers but go with DSCaler (its free, google it) and turn on a couple nice filtering effects for a crisp clear image. Awesome if you just want some tv on your desktop or whatever, I used to use mine in transparency mode over the bottom right corner of my screen.

 

[sumo28]

What do you guys think I should get if I am not experienced at all in these tv tuner cards and I have no idea what all those technical terms mean?

I have been looking around and I was at first considering the Hauppauge PVR-150 ($73.99), PVR-150 MCE ($66.99) Diamond PVR 550 ($63.99), or the LEADTEK WINFAST "DELUXE" TV2000XP which I believe is around 45-50. All of those are w/ S&H and tax.

I am a college student in a small dorm room and I wanted one mainly so I can use my computer as a tv and watch cable as well. Recording would be nice but I probably won't be recording all that much. I'm using a dell dimension 8300 3.2 ghz, 1 gig of ram, some 256 mb nvidia card, and a 160 gig hard drive.

What is the main differnce between all of those models and this model which is only $20?? Is this model enough for my purposes??

.... and what is the main difference between software and hardware encoding?? does that really affect me with the way i am using this carD?

 

[emeraldsky]

K1114, thanks for the tip. DScaler picks up different channels than WinTV2000.

 

[hytek369]

ttt

 

[hytek369]

ttt

 

[Jave]

Good card, I am using KnoppMyth and it works flawlessly. Recording is very good quality.

 

[Cruez]

Thanks...

I got two for myself (security camera usage) and one for a neighbor....

 

[CyberTron]

Originally posted by: Jave
Good card, I am using KnoppMyth and it works flawlessly. Recording is very good quality.

what are your system specs? i am in the process of doing the same setup, i got two of these cards and I have a 2400+ and 512 ram and just wanted to make sure that was enough to do recording in the background as well as watching in the foreground. Also how hard was it to get that setup going? I havent really spent much time on it but it seems like a pain, course all linux stuff is if your not to handy with it. I'm getting better though

 

[goutnout]

Originally posted by: timxpx
does this card have a hardware encoder on it?

no hardware encoder

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: sumo28
What do you guys think I should get if I am not experienced at all in these tv tuner cards and I have no idea what all those technical terms mean? I have been looking around and I was at first considering the Hauppauge PVR-150 ($73.99), PVR-150 MCE ($66.99) Diamond PVR 550 ($63.99), or the LEADTEK WINFAST "DELUXE" TV2000XP which I believe is around 45-50. All of those are w/ S&H and tax. I am a college student in a small dorm room and I wanted one mainly so I can use my computer as a tv and watch cable as well. Recording would be nice but I probably won't be recording all that much.

Then this WinTV-Go PCI TV/capture card will probably be perfect for you, to start using/learning about these sorts of cards. Generally, the more-expensive (more than $60 or so) cards, or ones with "PVR" in their names, have some sort of hardware encoder/decoder chip. Just basic "TV/tuner/capture" cards don't do any hardware encoding/decoding, they just capture and usually have a tuner built-in. They are great for simply watching television (or another video source like a VCR or a game console) in a window, or full-screen on your PC. You can also record the input as well. But recording will take up a bit of CPU time and HD space/IDE bandwidth.

Originally posted by: sumo28
I'm using a dell dimension 8300 3.2 ghz, 1 gig of ram, some 256 mb nvidia card, and a 160 gig hard drive. What is the main differnce between all of those models and this model which is only $20?? Is this model enough for my purposes??....and what is the main difference between software and hardware encoding?? does that really affect me with the way i am using this carD?

It's probably perfect for you.

The "PVR"-style cards are design to enable capturing/playback of video in the background, without affecting other computer tasks (extremely low system overhead due to hardware offload), and in the better ones, to allow capturing one video source at the same time as viewing/playing-pack another previously-captured stream. If both compression and decompression were using the main CPU in that case, you would need a really powerful CPU, and everything would have to be perfectly-syncronized, to avoid dropping frames or skippy playback. Doing it in hardware avoids those issues, but of course, the card/chipset costs more.

I have an old (original) WinTV PCI model, and it works just fine for basic TV/video viewing and occasional capturing. I wouldn't reommend it for making "professional" quality home movies, but it's just fine for the basic stuff.

 

[Jave]

Hi CyberTron,
This is my setup:
AMD XP2400+
Shuttle AN35N Ultra (Earlier I had a Syntax board but sound was really bad)
512 MB PC2100 (1 Centon + 1 Kingston)
XFX FX4000 64 MB
Hauppauge WinTV-GO TV Tuner/ Video Capture Card
I am using onboard sound and KnoppMyth R5

Everything worked at default settings except the video card driver which must be updated to get smooth picture. Press ctrl+ F1, login, run the command "install-nvidia.sh" on the terminal and follow instr. (usually say OK)

 

[CyberTron]

do you mean R4V5? i am not finding an R5 anywhere. thanks

 

[Jave]

Sorry for the error, it is R4V5.
It took me about 10 minutes to setup but I have only one card that I use for recording usually. It requires little linux knowledge if hardware is already supported in linux.
It is easier if you are not planning to setup a double boot syatem. Just select the "Auto Install" option and follow the instructions.
Only problem I had was setting the correct time for Central time zone. To resolve this problem I took following steps:
1. During the install just select the correct time zone.
2. After reboot it will show again the time settings, here select the correct time zone agian and correct the time if its incorrect. Otherwise tv guide will be a little off.


For two cards I think you will need two sound cards and configuration is a little more complicated. I used two cards but one was PVR250, also I used Fedora Core 3 for it and there was no need for an additional sound card. An excellent source for Fedora Core 3 is
www.wilsonet.com
I could not find any better documentation than this. Might help if you look at it any way.

Hopefully, this info will help

 

[Speckledpig]

I agree with a previous poster in that this card is really only good for viewing TV on your desktop. I have had this card for a couple years and have enjoyed it on my gaming box, but I can say that if you want a PVR you should get thee a PVR-250 or the new PVR-150 from Hauppauge. Those are fantastic capture cards.

JMHO
speck

 

[ChrisHeurlin]

I just got my card a couple of days ago and I've been trying to set it up but haven't had any luck. I downloaded the driver here http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_pci_878.html
which seemed to install OK but then I tried to install the WinTV2000 program here
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_pci_878.html#wintv2000app
but it doesn't work when I try to open it. It says:
error cannot locate the capture filter (Hauppage WinTV Capture)
then
Cannot build filtergraph
then
WinTV initialization error htv=0

I don't have any WinTV2000 previously installed. I realize this may be slightly off topic, but I wasn't sure who to ask. Thanks,
Chris

 

[emeraldsky]

I had trouble installing the drivers and had to boot into safe mode to get things going.
Funny thing is, WinXP installed drivers after the Hauppage drivers were installed, but it wouldn't install them before that.
Try reinstalling the drivers.
You may have to reboot after installing the drivers.

 

[Cruez]

hmmm.. I had no problems at all... on XP...

 

[AmericasTeam]

Ordered one. Thanks for the great deal.

 

[neit]

Aye, I too just ordered one. All i want to do is watch TV when doing some menial stuff on the other display. I hope this works fine with an ati 9600 pro when in dual display mode. Its pretty cheap either way, I can give it to a friend if it doesn't work out.

 

[Dark Avalanche]

Was wondering what you guys used to record with this particular card? I had the free trail of BeyondTV but it is expiring and I was hoping some of you had insight into another good, (free preferabley) software that offers some of the same functionality as BeyondTV.

 

[Vanstorm]

Mine freezes up my computer when trying to install drivers (Win 2000) and on my XP Box, it caused all my hard disks/floppy drives to not be recognized.

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

Originally posted by: Vanstorm
Mine freezes up my computer when trying to install drivers (Win 2000) and on my XP Box, it caused all my hard disks/floppy drives to not be recognized.

EXACT SAME problem i had!!!! I have the NF7-S v2 and it messed up my cd drives and hard drives.. I fixed it sorta by reinstalling nforce drivers.

Device manager also showed the device having an exclaimation mark in yellow. I emailed their techsupport and they just said it was conflicting and i should move the card into another pci slot. I doubt that this will fix the problem, and im too lazy to take off my case atm lol. Oh well maybe someone else knows?

 

[wfay]

I've fixed problems with several PCI cards by moving them to different slots in various motherboards. Ask in the Motherboard forum for why this happens, I'm too lazy to bother explaining it here.

Stop being lazy and move the card, see if it doesn't fix the problem.

 

[Dark Avalanche]

I guess no one has any info on a "Beyond TV" like program with a guide that is compatable with this card (and free) then eh?

 

[wfay]

Whats the incentive for a company to release a Beyond TV like program with guide for free? Especially considering the guide data is owned by a few companies who charge $ per person etc to distribute the data? Its a losing proposition, this is why Replay, Tivo, etc all charge monthly (or pre-paid monthly in the form of lifetime) service fees.

Just pay for the subscription.