Hauppauge 1120CN WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder

by Hauppauge

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• ASIN: B000J1CCGA
• Item model number: 1139
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (155 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,147 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 28, 2006

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description The Hauppauge 1139 WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid TV Stick External TV Tuner/Video Recorder will bring high-definition television directly to your PC. This handy device lets you watch your favorite TV shows through your computer, and record them digitally for future playback using high quality MPEG-2. More economical and versatile than a DVR, or digital video recorder, this PC Video Recorder, or PVR, gives you virtually unlimited options for saving and playing back your favorite TV broadcasts and clips.

The Hauppauge 1139 WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid TV Stick External TV Tuner/Video Recorder offers: Ability to watch television on your PC in a window or full screen. Portable, small size for on-the-go television viewing on your laptop. Compatibility with digital and analog signals. Acceptance of video feeds from a camera or satellite box.

The small, pocketable size lets you easily take it everywhere. View larger.

Play and Record Television Digitally
The WinTV-HVR-950 is a simple-to-use device that brings over-the-air high definition ATSC digital TV as well as analog cable TV directly to your PC desktop or laptop. With the additional included antenna, it can also receive analog TV broadcasts, and it can also accept video feeds directly from a camera or satellite box.

More versatile than a DVR, the WinTV-HVR-950 is a pocket-sized device that simply plugs into your PC's USB port. It features a built-in digital ATSC over-the-air TV receiver. If you live in one of the more than 200 cities in the United States that receives ATSC digital TV, you'll have immediate access to as many as 1500 digital TV stations. ATSC digital TV is the over-the-air HDTV standard for North America. ATSC broadcasts range in resolution from standard definition up to the high definition 1080i format. (To check the ATSC digital transmissions in your area, input your zip code at titantv.com.)

A portable digital TV antenna, which can be used to receive digital TV up to 10 miles from an ATSC transmitter, is included with the PVR . (To check the ATSC digital transmissions in your area, input your zip code at titantv.com) If you live in an area where you can't currently receive ATSC digital TV, the WinTV-HVR-950 can still be used to watch and record analog TV from cable TV or a TV antenna. (The WinTV-HVR-950 cannot receive digital cable TV or digital satellite TV.)

Once the WinTV-HVR-950 is connected, you can begin to record your favorite shows in high-quality MPEG-2 directly to your hard disk using the Hauppauge SoftPVR MPEG-2 encoder. Television recordings will typically consume 5 GB of disk space per hour for ATSC high definition, while analog recordings will typically consume 1.5 GB of disk space per hour. You can also use the included WinTV-Scheduler to program your compute to record your favorite analog or digital TV shows for play back at any time.

The WinTV application offers an elegant interface to watch TV in a window or full screen. View larger.

Compatibility with Microsoft's Windows Media Center means that you can watch TV as well as your recordings with Windows Media Center. The included WinTV application also lets you watch your shows in a window or on full screen.

More about PVR Technology
PVR stands for PC Video Recorder. The WinTV-HVR-950 is a PVR that allows you to play television through your computer and record the broadcasts digitally. PVR doesn't use standard videocassettes; instead, it uses your computer's hard disk to store the broadcasts.

Once you record a television show to your PC's hard drive, you can burn a CD or DVD that will allow you to play the show back on another computer or on your television. With video editing software (not included with the WinTV-HVR-950), you can even edit the shows. This is a great feature if you want to save clips from movies or sitcoms, or keep your favorite player's grand slam or TD kick-off return for posterity.

And just like a typical VCR, the WinTV-HVR-950 offers you several recording options, depending on your play back needs. If you want the highest quality recording for playback through your HDTV, all you need is enough hard drive space to support high-quality recording. By using the lowest recording option, you can use your WinTV-HVR-950, along with an inexpensive video camera, as a low-cost on-site video surveillance system. In fact, the possibilities of how you can take advantage of the WinTV-HVR-950 are endless.

What's in the Box
WinTV-HVR-950 USB 2.0 TV stick with cable TV or ATSC antenna connection; USB extension cable; portable antenna; software on CD-ROM; and quick installation guide.

Product Description

The WinTV-HVR-950 is a usb2 TV Stick with a Hybrid TV tuner receiver for both NTSC analog or over-the-air ATSC hi-definition digital TV. Watch pause and record television on desktop notebook or laptop computers. It's Pocket Size form factor makes it the perfect traveling companion for use with laptop and notebook computers. Ships with standing portable telescoping antenna. Compatible with Windows XP XP Pro or XP Media Center Edition with Service Pack 2.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

116 of 121 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great tuner & PVR functionality; resource intensive on some systems, October 12, 2006

By 

Earle A. Dopter (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hauppauge 1120CN WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder (Electronics)

I purchased one of these new USB tuners earlier this week and have been playing with it for about 2 days now.

For reference, I have an AMD 4000+ single-core system with 1 GB RAM and an nVidia 7800 GT video card.

Install was a breeze. Included documentation was minimal but sufficient to get you "up and running".

GREAT video quality, but taxes your CPU if you can not use video hardware acceleration. Must use a dedicated USB2 port for best results. Do NOT use a hub if you can avoid it, especially if you have a USB WLAN adapter already connected to it! Using video card hardware acceleration causes image corruption and I have not been able to resolve this issue with drivers, etc. Still working on it. However, the CPU is able to handle the load (barely) with excellent image quality. PVR function is awesome. The ability to use TitanTV scheduling is very helpful. Recorded image quality exceeds that of what is displayed "live" on my machine, at least in full screen. Works for both analog cable & ATSC (OTA HD).

The included antenna for ATSC is not very good - invest in a better, amplified antenna for best results. It would probably be great for sitting in a big city airport terminal, though.

Overall - very pleased with the purchase.

12/22/06 Update regarding hardware acceleration: I still have not been able to successfully make hardware acceleration work with the combination of an AMD 4000+ processer and nVidia 7800 GT or nvidia 7950 GX2 video cards. This does not impact standard def programming at all, but HD programming can get a little choppy using only the CPU. However, hardware acceleration works PERFECTLY on my older Dell XPS2 laptop with a 2 GHz Pentium M and an nVidia 6800 Ultra video card.

62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good for High Def, Not so good for Analog, February 6, 2007

By 

Manix (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hauppauge 1120CN WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder (Electronics)

The antenna provided can pick up a fair number of ATSC channels in the Greater Boston area. The picture quality for those channels -- especially the HDTV broadcasts -- on my laptop is stunning. The programs I have recorded also look very good, though I can notice dropped frames here and there -- which is probably due to limitations of my laptop as well as antenna reception.

When I connect the coaxial cable from my Comcast Digital box, the picture quality is worse than what I get directly on TV. I wouldn't recommend it for recording Cable Channel programs using this device or software.

The WinTV software that comes with the product is very basic. I downloaded trial versions of softwares from Beyond TV and SageTV, and had better experience with them. I also noticed better picture quality for analog cable channels when I used Beyond TV software instead of WinTV.

For better experience with this product I would recommend: (a) More powerful HDTV antenna, and (b) Better PVR Software like Beyond TV or Sage TV.

I have a dual core laptop (XP Home) with 1 Gig memory and a decent ATI graphics card, so I didn't face any major performance issues -- except perhaps when recording.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great tuner if you're willing to invest, May 14, 2007

By 

N. Moloney (Kent, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hauppauge 1120CN WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder (Electronics)

This is a great tuner. I've been using the Hauppauge 150 (an analog tuner) for over a year now which worked pretty well for me, i just wasn't happy with the picture quality. So i decided to get a new computer and buy this HD stick. My computer, in case it helps, has 2 GB of RAM and the Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz processor.

I installed this for the first time and it didn't work, so I decided to take out my Analog tuner (the 150) and try again, and after restarting it worked pretty well. I found that if I touched the antenna, the reception was better and it didn't miss frames, which was a pain because I wasn't about to hold on to the antenna the whole time it recorded. So I went to radioshack and bought a better antenna for 25 bucks which works WAY better. Almost perfect reception now.

Everyone says that the program that comes with the tuner is buggy and crashes a lot and stuff, and I assumed that with a new computer it would be ok. It's NOT. The program that comes with the tuner is not great. I've been using it for my analog tuner, and it was alright, but definitely not what i was looking for since it doesn't automatically record favorites or anything like that. It also lays out the channels weird, and sometimes on startup doesn't even show the tuner at all. So I decided to try out one of the trial programs. I tried BeyondTV first, and found that the image was really dark. Then i tried SageTV which works great. The only problem I have is that it crashes every now and then while I'm watching a previously recorded show and taping something at the same time. It works just fine when it's only recording.

I found that using these third party programs is the only way to use my analog tuner at the same time as this HD tuner, so I guess I'm gonna have to upgrade from the trial.

As for using my computer's resources, it doesn't slow me down (although my computer is pretty fast to begin with). Right now I'm recording two shows, one on each tuner and my CPU usage is at 3% and my memory is at 38%, which is only slightly higher than when it idles.

So, if you want a good picture quality and don't mind spending extra $$$ on a new antenna and software, this is definitely a great tuner. Just don't expect it to work great out of the box.