Customer Reviews

Hauppauge 1120CN WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(58)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I've been looking for a USB HDTV Tuner mainly to watch TV from my laptop and I came across this one. I was choosing between this Hauppauge WINTV HVR-950 or the Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick. The PCTV seems to have more accessories as it includes an A/V adapter cable and a Mini remote control. It also seems as good as the WINTV HVR-950 in terms of performance, basing that opinion solely on Amazon and CompUSA reviews. However, the price difference swayed me to take the plunge and try the WINTV HVR-950. The A/V adapter cable and a Mini remote control would have been nice BUT I did not think it was worth the extra cost.

I wasn't expecting much from this USB Tuner but it blew me away! It is awesome! I connected this tuner to a 1.6MHZ Intel Centrino M with 1GB of RAM. I was expecting the picture to be choppy but it pulled in 31 digital over-the-air channels in my area and stations broadcasting in HDTV came in very clear. The tuner is software-based and there is a noticeable lag when switching channels. Since my expectations were not very high, this wasn't an issue for me. It would be sweet watching HDTV from the airport while waiting for my next flight. Overall, I'm extremely impressed with this product and I recommend it.

I have attempted to install this product several times on a Vista laptop and an XP desktop. The installation has failed at every attempt. There is lots of information on the website and new drivers. However, these fail to install as well. I am awaiting a reply from their technical support (it has been 24 hours with no response.) Unless you have a lot of patience I would recommend you look elsewhere for a PC ATSC tuner. I will repost if I eventually get this working.

I bought this tuner with a lot of misgivings after reading the user reviews. And more importantly with a nightmare experience with an ati tv wonder usb 2 (DONT BUY one of those) including having it literally melt.
Note i'm a truck driver and have two specific uses for the card. To watch while parked over the road and to record cable at home to watch later. Not looking for "flashy" ie sagetv etc.

Im using a Toshiba l35 with a 1.6ghz processor and 798m ram (700 available). pros: The picture is excellent (compared to prev card). The cute little analog antenna actually works ok (for what it is). I tested it inside a house whos wiring even devastates my cellular net card and it picked up local channels ok. A little snowy but a tv would do the same. Hooked up to cable and it quickly finds all the channels. It is recording as type this. There is a tiny amount of snow in the two tiny recordings ive made so far but nothing to worry about for what i use it for. It is likely that will be solved once i tweak the card/drivers etc. There is No lag for me while watching and recording to a usb drive.

It uses BDA drivers which means in theory it should (soon) be available to all pvr software once it has been around a while. Unfortunately as we speak none of the free pvr software (gbpvr etc) can use it.

Handles widescreen natively. On a widescreen laptop this is nice.

The tuner software is good. Note that is the live view/record software, not pvr. It is simple, clean, easy to understand though it doesnt have any bells and whistles. If you're one of the people all about appearances (want a big pretty pvr screen that fakes being a tv guide thing you wont love it). But it is very functional.

Cons: Some problems with drivers. Had to reinstall drivers to get sound to work. Then when fiddling lost video but this was solved once by unplug/replug of card and the second time (after i fiddled with settings) by running the hauppauge "primary" app.
No pvr software that i can find. It has a scheduler etc that seem to be set to work with titantv but no docs on it, doesnt install automatically i dont think and the xp service crashes when you try to start it. Probably an unusual problem.
PVR software support - this is a new card and support for it in third party apps is virtually nonexistant. However because of the drivers that will probably change soon as opposed to the cards which will never be supported (hello ati).

Conclusion: this card is perfect for my uses though ill need to buy beyondtv or sagetv. With the circuitcity deal for $[...] after rebates you get an hdtv ready card with good low processor capture. It is nearly headache free which is rare in capture cards. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat. Imho the only product that compares to it is the hauppauge tvusb2 for about 30% more that doesnt apparently do htv but has a hardware encoder.. and so far that doesnt even seem to be needed. If you want a card to watch tv on, want hdtv capability and a usb card get this. If you are a video purist who demands stunning clarity.. you may want to stick with pci cards or check out the ultra high end usb cards, though i dont know of one that compares to this unique feature set.

When I first saw this, I thought there was no way that little thing could put HD-TV on my tablet PC. In my apartment, I already have an old LCD projector, which I got pretty cheap, projecting a 100" image on a screen. This little device allows me to watch free HDTV on a 100" screen for a very reasonalbe price. I was originally going to buy a dedicated media center computer and to put in a more expensive hardware encoding card to get HDTV on my projector, ( even this would have been cheaper than getting an HDTV half the size.) I thought I'd give it a shot, and it works pretty much flawlessly. I am glad I gave it a chance. I even got rid of my tv in my bedroom, and now watch nothing but HD. Just make sure you have a newer laptop to run this, to get good quality, you will need core duo and a dedicated graphics card of some sort.

In summary, for less than 100 dollars, I added a 100" HDTV to my living room with no monthly fees.

I was recently thinking about getting cable for our HTPC/Projector setup. Until recently, we were just watching DVDs, but that does not allow for high-quality live TV, like sports. However, I was not interested in the additional 150+ channels of nonsense, clunky hardware, three additional remotes and price that comes with cable or dish. So I saw this gadget and thought ok, lets give it a try for $100... I only set it up with the small antenna it comes with on a 2.8GHZ pc and a 1280x1080 dlp projector. The results were better then expected, to say the least. Now we got 25 digital channels, all the HD programming of the major and local networks and the reception is great. It is way much better then anything on ntsc, including cable or dish! If you think about getting an HDTV receiver for cable, better try this first. We are three miles from a TV Tower, but with an external antenna, you probably get good results even from a distance.
I just got the unit this weekend, so I am still learning about aspect ratio, resoultion, etc. The documentation is unfortunately very basic.
We had friends over for the footbal game this weekend and they were all impressed to see HD on a 7 x 5' screen with 5.1 speakers.

This tuner works as advertised. I use it with a cable connection and change channels on the cable box. I use it on a new computer with a quad processor and vista home premium 64 bit. Installed with out a hitch.

Purchased this from Radio Shack for $50 and was pretty impressed on how well it worked. The were some issue installing the software and actually shut down my computer but it did recover. I got about 10 HD stations around the Philly area. This thing also included an extra set of cables for me to hook up by old Hi8 Camcorder and I can now tranfer the tapes to my computer hard drive. Overall, a great product that works well so far.