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Hauppauge WINTV-PVR-150 HARDWARE MPEG2 PCI TV TUNER WITH TV RECORDING (MPN: 1045)
Description: WinTV-PVR-150 puts TV watching under your control! Watch TV on your PC screen (in a window or full screen), digitally record your TV shows, or pause live TV and create your own instant replay.Create your own Digital Video Recorder! The WinT.... Read More Description: WinTV-PVR-150 puts TV watching under your control! Watch TV on your PC screen (in a window or full screen), digitally record your TV shows, or pause live TV and create your own instant replay.Create your own Digital Video Recorder! The WinTV-PVR-150 turns your PC into a digital video recorder. Record TV program or home videos to disk, play them back to your PC screen or burn them onto DVD. With data rates from 4.4MBits/sec up to 12Mbits/sec (or as low as 1 Mbit/sec with VCD formats), you decide how much hard disk space your videos will consume. At DVD quality, a typical one hour TV show will take 2 gigabytes of hard disk space.WinTV-PVR includes WinTV-Scheduler and WinTV-Editor. Trim your videos, cut out segments, put them back together, all without losing any video quality with WinTV-Editor! With WinTV-Scheduler, you can control your TV recording on a daily, weekly or random schedule. Automatically record your favorite programs so you'll never miss your TV shows again!WinTV-PVR's pause feature gives you control of what you watch in your WinTV window. Get personal "instant replay" to stop the action when you want to analyze a key scene. Instantly rewind and replay the action again. You're in control with WinTV-PVR!Ever been called to the phone, had to answer the door, or went for a snack and missed part of the big match? With WinTV-PVR, you'll never miss the action again. Just click on WinTV-PVR's "One Touch Pause" button to pause your TV program, click again to continue watching where you left off. Then fast forward to catch up to the live broadcast.Record your TV programs or home videos onto DVD or CD, and play them on your DVD player! If you have a DVD burner in your PC, use the WinTV-PVR's MPEG files with the included Ulead DVD MovieFactory to author your own home DVD's. Turn your TV shows or home videos into DVD movies!WinTV-PVR-150 contains a highly integrated MPEG-1/2 hardware encoder, plus a high quality video digitizer. WinTV-PVR-150 can record full screen TV or video from a VCR or camcorder, using as little as 1.5GB of hard disk space per hour. The encoded MPEG-2 video is sent over the PCI bus, where it is stored on the PCs hard disk. The video can also be played back to the PC screen while recording. Minimize |
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| Date Reviewed: 02/10/2005 |
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 What can I say? I bought this card after a lot of ... Strengths: 1. Installs flawlessly
2. Software works
3. No heavy system CPU load
4. MPEG2 hardware encoding saves time
5. Video quality is excellent... as long as you tweak it.
Weaknesses: 1. Audio quality. See comments.
Summary: What can I say? I bought this card after a lot of research comparing reviews to Adaptec, WinFast, Plextor, and Avermedia.
I was happy at first, because I was totally enamored by the incredible video capture quality... but then I noticed it was capturing audio way too loud.
For example, I captured the Return Of The Pink Panther in MPEG2. There is the opening sequence where the burgler steals the jewel, and there is very little noise or talking in this sequence. The audio on the 150 AUTOMATICALLY raised the volume actively seeking audio to record. You know that hiss you hear if you turn your speakers up too loud? Well I could hear that hiss while watching that movie sequence and VERY low levels. All captures were recorded like this. On a basic capture with avg noise/talking the entire audio track is recorded at levels bordering on distortion during volume peaks.
You should have been here when I finished my first MPEG2 capture with this card. I had replaced my WinFast 2000xp after a year of owning it, so that I could capture in MPEG2 instead of AVI. I burned the capture to DVD, put it into my component system and turned it on. Thing is after a years worth of captures with the WinFast I didn't consider that their volumes would be THAT different. The freakin system shook the house! And I fell off the sofa trying to scramble for the volume control on the reciever. I turned it down to ... maybe 4% of total volume on the reciever. With the WinFast it was always around 20% of the volume. Even at 4% of volume the audio had a distorted sound quality during peaks.
Let me be very clear... THERE IS NO WAY FOR YOU TO CONTROL THE INPUT VOLUME. NONE!!!! The only volume control in the software is for output. AND... there are no tweaks available on the net for the registry to get around this.
This card either uses the same video chip as the Hauppauge 250 or it's within the same 'family', because a lot of the registry tweaks for the 250 WILL work on this card (sharpess etc.). But the audio chip is different.
I tried for almost 3 weeks to get this card to perform correctly. I tried EVERY tweak and reinstallion you can imagine. I even installed it in a different PC to see if it was my current chipset, but I experienced the same audio issue.
The 2 systems I tried:
1. A64 3500+, Windows SP2, 2 x 512mb 3200, K8T800Pro
2. AMD 1800+, Windows SP2, 768mb 3200, Nforce2
Now maybe it's strictly AMD products but this issue is well known at the a/v sites that discuss these issues and I believe this would have been confirmed by now.
I really suspect that this is a quailty control/ manufacturing hardware issue.(Which means no patch will correct it) I think only SOME cards are defective. But I gather from other posts elsewhere there are a significant amount of these cards floating about.
I returned this card and spent a little more for the 250. It works PERFECTLY in BOTH of my systems.
In terms of support:
Hauppauge is very friendly and knowledgable when it comes to old existing issues. How to program different capture settings into their scheduler. Where to go to tweak the sharpness. etc. But with this issue they were lost and my 30 day return window was rapidly shrinking. During the last week I had to return this card, I asked to speak with a supervisor. I left a voice mail message (twice - three days apart on his phone line) I'm still waiting on a return call - and it's been 4 weeks. Needless to say I returned the card within my 30 day window, but I did want to speak to him and hear what he had to say about what he suspected the problem to be and I had also wanted to see if he would have been willing to switch/upgrade my card if I kept it beyond the 30 retail return period. Obviously I now have no reason to believe that this KNOWN issue will be addressed with the proper customer and technical support it deserves.
If you try this card - hopefully it works for you. BUT MAKE SURE YOU PURCHASE FROM A STORE THAT WILL ALLOW YOU TO RETURN IT.
 95% of People (52/55) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 03/08/2005 |
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Strengths: (1) easy to install, (2) included software is acceptable (3)tech support is helpful and relatively fast at response to email/voicemail (4) inexpensive
Weaknesses: (1) driver on CD's are out of date and not all the lateast drivers are available on Hauppauge's website (2) picture quality is lower than TV
Summary: 2005-03-08 12:27:23 (1) using wintv2000 (included software an on their website) is adequate but quality is not up to TV standards on an 800x600 resolution screen
(2) had to use FFDshow and DScaler to improve picture quality
(3) had to call tech support for location of missing irblaster.exe update (website link is invalid), found that they have an FTP location for their lateast files
(4) spend 2 evenings trying to get the remote for the irblaster to control the cable box (still unsuccessful, but will figure it out eventually)
(5) lots of forums that cover how to work the tweaks of this card
(6) irblaster is REQUIRED if you want to control an external cable box (i.e. for digital cable) or an external satellite box
(7) documentation in the retail box is inadequate, but point #5 helps to alleviate this
(8) freeware software gives better picture quality than the provded software (i.e. using gb-pvr, media portal, titan tv, mythTV(for you linux users))
(9) MCE NOT required (as pointed out by the software choices in point #8)
(10) if you want to watch one show and record another at the same time you'll have to purchase two cards (still cheaper than buying the pvr-500)
(11) you can also use USBirt or IR_Extender with this card for the IR control of digital cable/satellite boxes)
(12) there are lots of paysoftware that work (i.e. sageTV, girder)
(13) no FM tuner, but that is another version of the card (which then doesn't have the ir blaster function)
My machine:
P4P800 Deluxe with a P4 3.0GHz
512 Megs of DDR400
Aslyum 5900 128Meg AGP Video Card
on board 5.1 sound
Some initial issues with the card:
I orginally installed it with the default software and it all worked out, except the wintv2000 was black and white ONLY. After I retrieved the latest software from the Hauppage website, it all worked out fine. Though the graphics were medium-low quality.
Then I uninstalled everything and reinstalled again, and it came out near perfect, left it on overnight, checked next day and for some reason I had video pause burps about ever 10-30seconds of play time.
Uninstalled everything again and reinstalled, and this time I also downloaded gb-pvr, media portal, ffdshow and dscaler and adjusted the dscaler and ffdshow properties. Next I tested it out on wintv2000 and it came out pretty clear, tried it on gb-pvr, and it came out better.
Next tried to use the irblaster, found that it didn't have my cable box make listed, spent 2 days sending emails and voicemail to the Hauppauge tech support, and finally got information to the ftp location via waiting on reaching the tech support guys. It seems to be that if you are on hold the automated message tells you the address for the ftp site, but this message only is on during business hours. If you call offhours you get dumped directly to the voicemail system (I think that's a mistake on Hauppage's part).
Next day got the lateast irblaster, put in my cable box make saw that I could control it (kinda) and now have spent 2 more partial evenings working out how to get it to actually control the cable box (still unsuccessful)
Personally I'd say the card was a good product, I've had some issues with the card and have gone through alot of online documentation to find what I needed. The best bet would to make sure you know EXACTLY what you want and if this card fits the bill, and your not afraid to do some tweaks on your own, then go for it. If you need some major hand holding and are afraid of doing anything except put the default software on your pc, this might not be the card for you.
In conclusion, good card, lots of headaches getting it to work, the provided documentation is in need of LOTS of work, but for the price it's a good card overall.
93% of People (13/14) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 05/20/2005 |
- guardy
from FL
- Member Since:
Mar 2004
View Member's:
Reviews
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Strengths: Very good product! Absolutely no problems installing in Windows XP. Everything works great. I havn't tried making VCD's yet or DVDs, but have no doubts it will work as well as everything else has.
Weaknesses: None
Summary: The quality is amazing. The cable we currently havedoesn't come in as good as we would like. A handful of channels, especially HBO, come in a tad on the fuzzy side in every single TV in the house. I don't know what this card does, but every channel comes in as clear as you should expect cable TV to com in. The picture is better on the computer than it is on the TV!
The scheduler is awesome, just register for the free Titan TV and fill out which cable you are receiving in your area. Then you can look at whats playing all week, click on it and bam is scheduled to record.
Lots of different quality selections to choose from so you don't necessarily need a lot of free space. For $100, you can't miss.
83% of People (5/6) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 06/27/2005 |
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Strengths: Price - I purchased this card for $60.00 after rebates
Footprint - Slim IR reciever that works well
Weaknesses: Interface - slightly bloated software
Summary: Overall I think this is a good card. For the price I paid I'm happy with the functionality. Having my favorite shows recorded and then stored digitally (on a big hard drive or DVRs) gives this setup a huge advantage over recording with VHS tapes. It's especially nice during sporting like the Tour de France and the Olympics (when held in China I can record the "live" coverage at 3AM instead of watching NBC's chopped up prime time pieces).
80% of People (4/5) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 05/09/2006 |
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 WINTV-PVR-150MCE dissapointment Strengths: Easy install
Weaknesses: Lousy picture
Summary: I just installed my WinTV-PVR-150MCE today and I must be missing something... because the picture is practically UNWATCHABLE. I have read many reviews that rave about picture quality, but mine is horrible. I am running WinXP MCE 2005 on a new PC with Intel Duo core 2.8 Gig CPU, 1 Gig of DDR @533Mh, and a 19" Flat Panel @ 1280 x 1024.
75% of People (3/4) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 02/18/2006 |
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Strengths: simple to set up, easy to work with good and fast response from support (e-mail)
Weaknesses: None so far discovered.
Summary: The set up was easy, the picture quality is great, pretty easy to rename the channels.
I hag one problem, some channels had no audio. E-mailed to support and had an Answer 3 days later, sent it on Saturday night, answer on Tuesday. The problem was easy to fix, just had to go to Menu> suite manager, there to the "muted" channels edit> and change from AFT to manually and fine tune till the audio was there.
Recording from Video 8 camcorder is fast and pretty good.
Did not try jet to get a copy from a really good source, my test tape is 15 years old.
Tried a "cheapo" before, what waste of time, used to have an ATI all in wonder, but this one was really old so it would be not fair to say the 150 is much better, but it is way less expensive. Got a good video card and this one, together not even half the money.
I love it and would recommend it even to friends :-)or buy it again.
75% of People (3/4) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 02/16/2005 |
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Strengths: Incredible Video quality at this price. I've encoded several of my old camcorder tapes, and they look incredible. The included software is adequate, if not really good.
Weaknesses: Sound is a little loud, and I haven't found a way to adjust it. Maybe it's just me.
Summary: I replaced my software encoding winfast 2000 with this hardware encoder. I'm really glad I did. Installation was easy, and it does just what it says it's supposed to. I'm very pleased with the captures I've gotten so far, no dropped frames and poor quality video, probably due to the hardware encoding.
71% of People (5/7) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 01/31/2005 |
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Strengths: 1) Personal Video Recorder
2) Tivo Functionality
3) TV tuner
4) Control
Weaknesses: 1) Audio does not work for mono broadcast of analog cable TV channels
2) No hardware Mpeg decoder
Summary: I bought this card after reading about 200 reviews on ATI, NVIDIA, etc... This card is by far the best. The TV tuner functionality is much better than my regular TV. I had no problems installing the software or hardware. I use Sony SDM-S204B LCD monitor and output qualtiy is excellent. There is no ghosting or shadowing at all. Remote control works well from several fit away. My only complaint is the following: if analog cable has a channel that is broadcasted in Mono, there is no sound genereated by WINTV-PVR-150. This is probably due to some setting that I have not figured out yet, but one would thing that card should autodetect Stereo VS Mono without user intervention.
69% of People (9/13) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 05/25/2005 |
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 After playing with the sound function many times, ... Strengths: Easy to install, excellent picture quality
Weaknesses: poor sound function
Summary: After playing with the sound function many times, I have to admit it's not capture the sound properly.
Besides that, this is a very good TV capture card. The video quality is very good even using the s-video
cable. This is my first build my own DVR and it's working perfectly in my living room, I didn't expect the
process would be so easy, after the install and several try and errors, I don't have to watch that many ads
any more. Cool!
67% of People (4/6) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 06/15/2005 |
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Strengths: Hardware capability is far and above the rest at comparable prices.
Weaknesses: Software is below average in usability and reliability.
Summary: Ratings represent 6 of 5 for hardware and 2 of 5 for software. Prior to buying the PVR-150, I was using both an ATI All in Wonder 7500 and a Hauppauge PVR-250 on different computers. AIW started losing lower channels, so the PVR-150 is the replacement. Hardware encoding is definitely the way to go. I wasn't to fond of the ATI software, but I loved Gemstar's TV Guide (simple click to schedule record). The PVR-250 did not always recognize the scheduked setting using Hauppauges scheduler and the external video connector worked for s-video but overcompensated for composite in.
I was a little anxious at first, but the PVR-150 solved all the problems I had with the PVR-250. Great video from tuner and separate svideo and composite in. I finally gave up on the mpeg editor and got MPEG2VCR, a great program with flawless editing features. Fortunately, I write software as a hobby (Delphi) and have figured how to read the registry entries generated by Gemstar. Now I have my own scheduler that works just like ATI's. Why can't Hauppauge do that?
Addressing volume, I found that the WAVE control adjusts recording volume to an extent. I always record at 100%, but setting WAVE to 50% records at 75%. I have Yamaha MS50 80 watt speakers at TV turned up half way and set computers PC volume at half way (front speakers 100%) and playback is theater quality (just a tiny bit loud).
Would I buy again? Just ordered second PVR-150 from Buy.com using $30 discount for credit card.
62% of People (8/13) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 06/27/2005 |
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Strengths: Records TV very well.
IR blaster works with my GI set top box.
TitanTV electronic program guide has been very handy.
Weaknesses: NA
Summary: I use mainly the "DVD Extra Long" play mode, which is about 2.5 Mbits/sec, and the video quality is very good. I was surprised that the video quality is this good for a pretty low datarate. I typically record 5 to 10 shows a week.
I almost never shut off my PC, and the WinTV-PVR-150 runs non-stop, and has for about 6 months now.
One big problem is that I go through hard disk drives at a pretty alarming rate. I rarely delete a TV recording, and I fill up 160Gig disk drives about every other month.
60% of People (3/5) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 02/08/2005 |
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Strengths: -New 45 button remote
-Included IR Blaster
Weaknesses: -placement of the number pad on the new remote is akward. Its placed on the bottom rather than on top
Summary: This is a great product that will soon replace TIVO and ReplayTV in my opinion. With the two products costing more than $500 for the hardware and the monthly service cost I see no reason why anybody wouldn't rather buy this card to add to their computer to make their own PVR.
This is a great product with hardware MPEG2 encoding. The video and audio quality is excellent. Moreover, if you have a video card with hardware MPEG2 decoding like the NVIDIA Geforce cards than you're good to go. I can't recommend this product enough. The card is stable with GB-PVR which is free and has the "season pass" feature like the TIVO.
56% of People (5/9) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 06/08/2005 |
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Strengths: Hardware MPEG2 encoding, Tivo-like functionality, 45-button remote, IR blaster, installs easily, supported by third-party TV software
Weaknesses: No RCA sound inputs, no FM tuner, occasional problems with remote, price may be slightly daunting at first
Summary: I decided that I wanted a TV tuner card for my computer, so I bought an ATI TV Wonder Pro at Best Buy for $50. What a mistake! The software was horrible (I had problems even making it install right), it had no hardware MPEG2 encoding, and there was little TV software support for it. So I returned that card, and bought this one for $100 at Circuit City.
This card has many more features than the TV Wonder. First of all, it comes with a remote and IR blaster. The IR blaster sends an IR signal to an external cable or satellite box (if you have one). I haven't used it, as I don't need to use it, so I don't know how well it works. The remote works fairly well. A program runs in the background to control the remote, which only takes up about 1MB of RAM. It controls the included WinTV program, and many third-party TV programs have made modified configuration files for the IR program to make it control the other programs as well! I have had times where the IR remote stops working until I restart my PC, however I don't really know what was going on and it doesn't happen anymore. The card also has a hardware MPEG2 encoder chip. That means that it will encode video in MPEG2 format with little CPU usage. This is especially good if you are using your PC a lot and recording a lot of shows.
The card installed easily into my PCI slot. PCI cards are really easy to install - you take the cover off the PC, take the cover off a PCI slot, slide the card in, secure it with a screw, and put the cover back on. The software with the card installed easily on my PC. Once installed, I was able to watch TV, pause live TV, and record shows to my hard drive in MPEG format. The remote works very well and seamlessly with the software. Hauppauge's included software isn't exactly "full-featured" though. So I downloaded GB-PVR for free at www.gbpvr.com.... It's a little tough to set up, but just follow instructions. The PVR150 card works really well with it, and I enjoy my PVR on my computer!
50% of People (3/6) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 02/10/2005 |
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Strengths: Easy installation, comes with a nice remote, intuitive Windows software, hardware encoding REALLY great, and a big community for linux support
Weaknesses: Now I have an extra unused and older tv tuner card? :)
Summary: Installation was easy and the software was quick to get going. I'm replacing a Leadtek Winfast 2000 XP Deluxe, which worked great, but lacked the mpeg encoder. Now I feel that movies are being recorded quicker and with fewer dropped frames at higher resolutions. It no longer messes up when my other programs need resources.
I have no major concerns/issues with this card.
All this experience was based on early impressions on an XP machine. I hope to turn it into a linux box, so my opinions may change with time.
50% of People (2/4) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 05/11/2005 |
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Strengths: This was a hard buy I was going to get WinTV PVR-USB2 external, then decided upon WinTV PVR-250, when I heard about the WinTV PVR-150 was suppose based on both WinTV PVR-250 and PVR-350.
Weaknesses: I haven't found any yet
Summary: The best TV in my house. The picture is great! There's no jumping and no lag between the video and audio. The recorder is super easy to use and the scheduler is easier to use than any VCRs. The thing I like is, you can take a snapshot of anything you're watching and it looks like a regular picture.
The setup was super easy. The hardest thing was taking the cover off of the computer- see what I mean. The board snaps in place, put the cover back on, hook up the cables and you're ready t go. The software is easy to use and understand!
42% of People (5/12) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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