Hauppauge 1187 WinTV-HVR-1250 Hybird PCI-Ex1 TV Tuner 1187

by Hauppauge

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 2.8 x 7.1 x 10.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item can only be shipped to the 48 contiguous states. We regret it cannot be shipped to APO/FPO, Hawaii, Alaska, or Puerto Rico.
• ASIN: B0010DIK3U
• Item model number: 1187
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #10 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Components > Video Capture Cards
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description The Hauppauge 1187 WinTV HVR-1250 PCI Express Hybrid High Definition TV Tuner Card Media Center lets you watch, pause and record both digital and analog television on your PC, in a window or full screen. With PVR software you can also record television directly onto your computer's hard drive for viewing later.

The Hauppauge 1187 WinTV HVR-1250 offers: Ability to watch, pause, and record digital and analog TV on your PC. Compatability with ATSC and QAM digital TV, and NTSC analog cable TV signals. Dbx-TV stereo decoding for spectacular sound. Includes WinTV-Scheduler to schedule TV recordings.

WinTV software makes it easy to record your favorite shows. View larger.

Watch and record high-definition digital television on your computer. View larger. View ports.

Watch High-definition Digital TV on Your Computer
The WinTV-HVR-1250 lets you watch ATSC digital TV as well as QAM digital TV and analog cable TV directly on your computer. ATSC digital TV, which typically requires an antenna for reception, 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.)

The WinTV-HVR-1250 also lets you watch and record QAM channels, which are unencrypted digital channels broadcast by your local cable operator. If you don't have access to digital television channels yet, you can also watch regular analog cable television.

In addition to high-definition video, the card also features a dbx-TV stereo decoder for great TV sound. The card has S-Video and stereo audio inputs that allow for connecting VCRs or cable/satellite set top boxes.

Your Own Personal Digital Video Recorder!
With the included Hauppauge's SoftPVR for Windows XP and Media Center software, you can easily record TV shows to your hard disk. Several recording options are available depending on your playback needs; higher quality video requires more disk space. Generally, 5 GB of disk space is used per hour of ATSC digital TV recordings, and 1.5 GB of disk space is used per hour of analog recording.

With the WinTV-Scheduler software, you can easily schedule the recordings of your favorite television shows daily, weekly, or just once. You can then play back the recordings at your leisure, burn them onto CD or DVD for playback on another computer or your television, or with video editing software (not included), you can even edit the shows. This is great for saving favorite movie clips, clips of your home team's dramatic last-second win, or your favorite player's grand slam.

The Hauppauge 1187 WinTV-HVR-1250 plugs into a PCI express X1 or X16 slot, and is compatible with Windows Vista, XP with Service Pack 2, and Windows XP Media Center Edition. With XP-MCE and Vista, you can add the WinTV-HVR-1250 as either the primary or secondary TV tuner. The Microsoft Media Center application supports up to two TV tuners so if you have a second tuner in addition to the WinTV-HVR-1250, you can watch one channel while recording another.

What's in the Box
WinTV-HVR-1250 PCI Express bus TV tuner, WinTV software CD-ROM, quick installation guide, and half-height bracket for use in low-profile chassis.

Product Description

Hauppauge 1187 WinTV-HVR-1250 Hybird PCI-Ex1 TV Tuner

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hard To Get To Work., March 31, 2009

By 

R. Mitchell "BaldViking" (Cherryvale, KS. United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hauppauge 1187 WinTV-HVR-1250 Hybird PCI-Ex1 TV Tuner 1187 (Personal Computers)

This TV Tuner Card works well once you download the new drivers, etc. from the website. As I use it primarily for putting old VHS tapes to my hard drive to burn to DVD, I was a little frustrated at the lack of instructions as to how to set the Tuner Card up. That seems to be a common problem with most electronic items these days though as this is not the first product I have purchased with less than satisfactory documentation. Once I got it all figured out after much research on the internet, it works great. I would have given it 4, maybe even 5 stars if the instructions had been better.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars works good, October 6, 2008

By 

xorba (nm) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hauppauge 1187 WinTV-HVR-1250 Hybird PCI-Ex1 TV Tuner 1187 (Personal Computers)

does what it's supposed to do. needs enormous processor power for hd.
included software did not work, i had to download their beta software to get going. all very confusing, took a while to realize that the software was the problem.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Setup info, March 31, 2010

By 

David Calder (Walnut Creek, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hauppauge 1187 WinTV-HVR-1250 Hybird PCI-Ex1 TV Tuner 1187 (Personal Computers)

I was able to get this to work on my Comcast service (no cable box, non-premium, QAM channels) on Windows Media Center, Windows 7 PC, with a bit of work. It was not completely the devices fault, though it may have bit of a weak tuner in pulling in the signal. I found that even though my Sony HDTV could see the QAM signals, the 1250 could not.

It turned out that I had to remove the distribution amplifier and be sure that all the coax cables were as short and well made as possible.

The symptom that the 1250 gives when it doesn't receive analog or QAM signals is that the "tuners" are not found. Initially it found the analog tuner since Comcast still has a few analog channels, but no QAM tuner showed up when Media Center was being set up. Sometimes the Analog tuner didn't show up when I tried a rescan.

However, Once I got the distribution amps out of the way, reduced the number of splitters, and made the coax cables as short as possible the QAM and Analog tuners showed up consistently in Media Center setup and the system found over 100 QAM channels.

The other gotcha is that the 1250 doesn't show all the channels it detects (so they don't show up in the Media Center Guide). It only shows you what it thinks are the "unscrambled" channels. However, even though the card thinks it is a scrambled channel, I found that if I looked at each channel, some of them would be decoded. I could then check the channel to be included in the active channel list. In the end I went from the setup saying I only had 35 channels to having nearly 100 QAM stations.

So now I have all the non-premium stations visible.

The remaining challenge is with Windows 7 which doesn't give me guide information on most of the channels. This is typical with QAM, but other systems seem to be able to let you force a network designation on a channel so the schedule downloads. So far, I can only do this if there is already a channel shown in the guide (I can assign and exsiting schedule to other channels). If the system was not expecting a network, you apparently can't assign it to a station. For example, I get QAM Style, but that was not in the original list of channels Windows 7 was expecting (based on my zip input and cable company lineup choice). So, there does not seem to be a way to get the guide to go ahead and pull down the Style channel programs in the guide. I see I'm way off topic, but the reason you buy these cards is to have a DVR setup and I wanted to relay some of my experiences in setting this up.