Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1600 $70 after $20 rabate

[fatBrain]

link

It is a new product from Hauppauge. Don't know how good it is. Bought one for myself.

 

[deadken]

Originally posted by: fatBrain
link

It is a new product from Hauppauge. Don't know how good it is. Bought one for myself.

Dude! Hurry up and post back with how GREAT it is! I am very interested in getting one of these. I think that there is supposed to be a 1800 series coming out also, I wonder what the differences are, between the 1600 + 1800, and how well they work. Does either do QAM?

 

[hiperco]

Looks like it might be decent, but doesn't support QAM (digital cable).

 

[dman]

I saw one a week ago at regular price $99 next to the PVR150 at $99 (both a Circuit City). I looked lik ethe HVR1600 does everything the PVR150 does PLUS it does OTA HD. Seemed like a crappy deal for the PVR150.

 

[sjwaste]

QAM support isn't a deal breaker. It can only tune clear QAM, which for most cable companies is only the broadcast networks. Unless you're really far away from the towers, you can just tune those over the air. The quality's usually better, as the cable companies recompress the stream to fit more into less bandwidth.

Now, if you're way out from the broadcast towers and need the QAM support, buy from somewhere with a return policy. I have a DVICO FusionHDTV5 Lite, for instance, and its worthless for QAM tuning. It cant lock at all. So I end up just using the OTA signal

 

[GZeus]

Quick question: Is this the only internal Hauppauge card that can capture OTA HD? (I have the USB HVR-950 stick and it rocks for travel with my laptop.)

Tried to find the answer on Hauppauge site but got lost. <need more coffee>

 

[iliopsoas]

I don't know anything about TV tuners for PCs. No QAM = no digital cable support at all? If I have Comcast digital cable, this card is no good?

 

[openwheelformula1]

I tried it and loved it. Changing DTV channels is very fast with this tuner. PQ is great as well. However I already have ATI650 and Fusion5 Lite so I returned it.

 

[Texun]

Not to thread crap but I found this little blurb at CompUSA:

ATSC TV recordings are not 100% compatible with DVD, and therefore you cannot burn them directly to a DVD

CUSA

I still want one and might give it a shot. How's the quality?

 

[deadken]

Originally posted by: Texun
Not to thread crap but I found this little blurb at CompUSA:

ATSC TV recordings are not 100% compatible with DVD, and therefore you cannot burn them directly to a DVD

CUSA

I still want one and might give it a shot. How's the quality?

From that CompUSA page,

Digital ATSC HD TV features

* ATSC over-the-air digital TV receiver built-in. Supports all ATSC formats, up to the high definition 1080i format!

* Record ATSC digital TV to your PC's hard disk using high quality MPEG-2. TV recordings will typically consume 5 Gb of disk space per hour for ATSC high definition.

Perhaps that has something to do with it? A 'regular' DVD is only 4.7GBs.

 

[Texun]

Originally posted by: deadken

Originally posted by: Texun
Not to thread crap but I found this little blurb at CompUSA:

ATSC TV recordings are not 100% compatible with DVD, and therefore you cannot burn them directly to a DVD

CUSA

I still want one and might give it a shot. How's the quality?

From that CompUSA page,

Digital ATSC HD TV features

* ATSC over-the-air digital TV receiver built-in. Supports all ATSC formats, up to the high definition 1080i format!
* Record ATSC digital TV to your PC's hard disk using high quality MPEG-2. TV recordings will typically consume 5 Gb of disk space per hour for ATSC high definition.

Perhaps that has something to do with it? A 'regular' DVD is only 4.7GBs.

I figured as much but they mentioned compatibility so I would think it might rule out DL as well as regular DVDs. Hauppauge makes a good product, IMO. My PVR250 still works perfect after several years and at least 4 builds. I may get this for one of my other computers.

 

[ric1287]

so was the poster earlier right in that it supports clear qam? That would be amazing.

 

[ric1287]

bought it and installed. Under device manager it states

"Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600 NTSC/ATSC/QAM Combo"

 

[deadken]

Originally posted by: ric1287
bought it and installed. Under device manager it states

"Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600 NTSC/ATSC/QAM Combo"

So, can you watch any HD channels only using your Cable feed?

 

[ric1287]

couldn't get my cable to tighten all the way, but it didnt get any signal anyway.

 

[Phonicc]

Awesome card for the price, won't do HD cable due to the whole CableCard mess but the sensitivity is excellent. I'm pulling in stations over 100 miles away with a Channel Master 4228. I'm in VA and I'm hitting South Carolina stations despite living in a forest.

As for the non DVD compliance issue what they're basically saying is that one hour of 1080i isn't going to fit on a DVD and the raw program stream from the transmitter isn't encapsulated in VIDEO_TS/AUDIO_TS folders

Watching PBS on a nice LCD with a good 5.1 system is very nice.
The HVR950 works very well too, and it it works perfectly with EyeTV on my iMac.

I haven't really used the analogue tuner on the PCI card much, but it has a hardware MPEG2 encoding chip onboard and works with MCE, it's basically a 150 with an HD tuner bolted on.

Hope this helps.

Edit: some good info on antennas etc:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=81

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: ric1287
bought it and installed. Under device manager it states

"Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600 NTSC/ATSC/QAM Combo"

I'm confused. QAM implies it can receive unencrypted QAM which would allow you to see the locals on cable as long as your company passes them along unencrypted. That seems to contradict this bolded statement on the Hauppauge page:

Note: ATSC digital TV is NOT digital cable TV or digital satellite TV. The WinTV-HVR-1600 cannot receive digital cable TV or digital satellite TV.

 

[zikronix]

according to reviews it does not support qam

 

[ric1287]

i am hoping that some hacked drivers/firmware allow QAM to function, i don't see how they could possibly mis-label it as a "ATSC/QAM Combo" card and not realiize

 

[gibster]

When you install the newest drivers, QAM is dropped from the description.

 

[zikronix]

Researching the Chip on the board. It physically does not support qam

 

[nomadh]

I looked at this last night and was tempted because my pvr-250 has been solid as a granite. But reading the pkg reminded me its still mpeg-2. That was fine for std def but I think the nextgen format should have nextgen compression. Where is the mpeg-4 chip HD? Thats where we will all be pretty soon and maybe why the price is so tempting. That said if you want hi-def now and have big disks this is pretty hot. Just don't care for 5 gig/hr thing.

 

[noping]

Be warned, this card does not work under Linux (for those that are interested in running it in combination with MythTV).

I bought a PVR-150 off of Newegg and received this model (HVR-1600) instead. Immediately sent it back for a RMA after it a) didn't work under Linux, b) didn't work as well as I'd like under Windows.

 

[GoatMonkey]

I'm probably going to pick up this one on Saturday. I would also prefer it with an option to get the stream sent to disk as mpeg4 instead of mpeg2. It would save my pitiful old XP2100 many hours of conversion processing under Snapstream.

Also, could anyone recommend a good antenna to go along with this card? Maybe even one that is sold at Circuit City?

 

[yuppiejr]

Originally posted by: GoatMonkey
I'm probably going to pick up this one on Saturday. I would also prefer it with an option to get the stream sent to disk as mpeg4 instead of mpeg2. It would save my pitiful old XP2100 many hours of conversion processing under Snapstream.

Also, could anyone recommend a good antenna to go along with this card? Maybe even one that is sold at Circuit City?

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