Hauppage HVR-2250 Owner's Thread

Cetrian,

I don' think it's your antenna. My antenna gets a great signal hooked straight to my tv and an equally good signal through the AverTV Combo PCIe card I replaced with the 2250. I got the 2250 to have two ATSC tuners so I could watch/record simultaneously, but it has been problematic so far. Signal strength is terrible and I can only tune in two of 15 channels I had before. I've tried the published drivers as well as the latest pre-release drivers... no luck.

Any idea what's going on?

Zayd

I am very interested in tuner performance experience info from the newer Hauppage cards! and if you are happy what are you using for an antenna?

I have had an HVR 1600 (1183) for over a year..and have had very poor tuner performance! I sent my first card back to hauppage because my first card only tuned NTSC and never any ATSC. they sent me back a different model (HVR 1800) that un fortunatly did not have a plug for the remote IR. This card however seemed to have better tuner performance.

I sent this back in an attempt to get a correct card with the mini plug for my hauppage remote. In retrospect I would have kept the hvr1800 card and found a usb IR receiver to have a working ATSC tuner. I did try a antenna amp as the hauppage document suggested this made no difference at all. I now suspect that these cards just have poor ATSC tuners.

The 1600 that came back still tunes NTSC fine, but it is hit or miss with ATSC. The same antenna works wonderfully for my other AV gear (full size attic mounted) Samsung HDTV, and Panasonic VCR tuning DTV channels. the HVR 1600 often can not receive any ATSC channels at all!

I had read a thread here that someone suggested the HVR 1250 was a much better tuner? can anyone confirm the tuner chips are changed? or what tuner chip generation is in use?

I'd hate to spend another $50 for yet another tuner card that has poor tuner performance if I can avoid it.

I also am using Win 7 MCE at the moment, although all my previous problems were with an XP machine.

from my experience with the 1600 the QAM tuner is pretty atrocious (could also be the case for ATSC too, although I haven't made a direct comparison yet). When my cable provider went all digital the 1600 could only pick up about 5 or 6 out of 50+ QAM stations. I replaced it with an avermedia card that picked up all the stations (and was much cheaper than the 1600), that was subsequently replaced by an HDHomerun box that offers the best reception by far.

I am probably the one who mentioned the 1250, but I am no longer contributing due to censorship issues.

I had this problem with the 2250 on QAM channels - resolved with an amplifier (~$30).

Now I get all QAM channels w/out a problem. Try that before you try a new card. Depending on where you live, how your cable is wired - you could have multiple splices (which degrade signal strength). The amplifier worked like a charm.

For whatever reason, I don't think WMC plays nicely with the tuner on the 2250. If I try to watch tv in VMC, I only get 3 ATSC channels. However, with MediaPortal in the same system, I get somewhere around 15 (i disabled all the stuff I don't watch and only have 9 actually showing on the guide). Pretty sure that the software shouldn't have any say in what gets tuned, but thats been my experience so far.

Someone on here said that the Fusion 7 or whatever has the latest and greatest ATSC tuner, but I haven't tried it yet.

I just picked up a pair of 2250's to install in my updated HTPC. I had been using six VBox USB ATSC tuners and they had a bad habit of dropping offline every so often. I'm pretty sure it was a hub issue and not the tuners themselves, but it was still annoying regardless of which component was at fault. I decided to go with two of the 2250's and a single HDHomeRun to replace the six VBox units based on recommendations at the hdtvtunerinfo.com website. I figured they'd be less likely to disappear if they were installed internally.

This is the first I've been hearing about any issues with the 2250's so I'll be monitoring them closely. I hope to get the new HTPC up and running in the next day or two so I'll see how it goes and let you know the results.

I have been having good luck with my 2250 so far. I have a homebuilt antenna based on the designs provided by mclapps here on AVS forum. I am running VMC and it seems to pick up all the channels I expected. I can get 1 more channel straight through my TV than through the tuner, but it is very weak and so I figured with the internal splitter it would drop off. I have had two occasions in which channels would just lock out and never come back even though going straight through the tv the channel was fine. However, this has happened only a couple of times and a reboot fixes it. I plan to get a preamp for my antenna to make sure I am sending the strongest signal possible to the card and tv. So far so good and I hope it stays that way!

I just upgraded my HTPC yesterday and installed a pair of 2250's along with a single HDHomeRun. I had been using six V-Box 3650 USB tuners on an external hub with BeyondTV. My initial impressions of both the 2250 and the HDHR is that neither tuner is as sensitive as my V-Boxes. Ironically, the 2250 indicated higher signal strength than the HDHR on the same channels and the signal is split internally in the 2250 so it should theoretically be lower as a result.

I live in between Baltimore and Washington, DC, so I have a lot of OTA HD channels to choose from. The Baltimore broadcast towers are only about 10-12 miles from me and come in quite strong, even after being sent through an 8-way splitter. I'm using an Antennas Direct C2 ClearStream antenna for the Baltimore channels.

The DC towers are about 30-35 miles away and are much weaker due to the longer distance. I'm currently using a Channel Master 4228 8-bay UHF antenna for reception but will soon replace it with an Antennas Direct C4 ClearStream, which is basically two C2's ganged together. Several of my local stations in both markets will be switching from UHF back to their original VHF frequencies, hence the need to switch from UHF-only to VHF/UHF antennas. I bought the Antennas Direct models based on recommendations from SolidSignal .com. They actually recommended the C2 for both markets based on my location but I figured rather than add an amplifier to the signal path I'd go with the higher gain antennas to compensate for splitting the signal so many times.

When I performed a channel scan during setup in BeyondTV, the DC channels on both tuners were too weak to include in my listings (81 and below). The Baltimore channels all peaked at around 97. I also have two S3 Tivos that I was able to use to maximize reception of the antennas. The S3 Tivo has a signal strength meter for OTA channels that I was able to use for aiming the Baltimore antenna. I'll use the same method for setting up the new antenna for the DC channels when it arrives later this week.

I haven't had a chance to watch any shows recorded with the new setup yet but a spot check of the live channels showed they were coming in fine so I'm sure they recorded OK.

I'll be able to chime in in the near future. I bought the HVR2250 and installed it on Windows XP Home with no problems. I still have to move my computer into the livingroom and connect it to the TV and the antenna, so I'll let you guys know how that works for me.

I've had a chance to watch a few shows recorded with the new tuners and so far everything looks good. In fact, this is the first time I've been able to watch a recorded program on my HTPC that didn't stutter or skip at least once or twice during a show since I built it almost two years ago. The new motherboard and lower power CPU (65W vs. 125W) seem to be doing the trick. Playback of my recorded shows looks every bit as good as those recorded on my S3 Tivos. I'm sure this is due to the lower heat output of the newer CPU and has nothing to do with the tuners.

The only problem is, I have no way of telling which tuner was used to record any given program in BeyondTV, although I seem to recall there may be a way to check it. Since I have the two 2250's configured as tuners 1 thru 4 and the HDHR tuners are 5 & 6, my guess is that BTV uses the higher-priority tuners before it picks one of the lower numbered ones, but then I'm just speculating. I had actually toyed with the idea of setting up the channel list for each tuner such that each tuner would be dedicated to a single network channel. That would certainly take the guesswork out of knowing which tuner was being used for any given program. The only caveat would be that if a recording looked substandard I'd have to determine if it was due to the tuner or the feed from the broadcast channel.

How would you compare the HDHomerun and the 2250s? I noticed you said the HDHR was reporting lower signal strength, do you think that is due to its tuner or just a fluke? I currently have the 2250 and am getting a couple dropped stations. Thanks for any comments.

I'm also beta testing W7 (64 bit) with a HVR-2250. When I used the beta drivers for the HVR-2250, I couldn't get any ATSC reception even though this setup has been working fantastic for me in Vista. Going to the officially released HVR-2250 drivers works fine.

I'm using it as a dual ATSC tuner + 1 NTSC tuner (satellite receiver). When using the primary NTSC input on the card, I was getting tuner conflicts all over the place as I changed channels between ATSC and NTSC. I then attached the secondary extension bracket to the HVR-2250 (with s-video and dual rca plugs for the audio), and that resolved my tuner conflicts.

It's difficult to make any comparison between them because I have no way of knowing exactly which tuner is online when I watch live TV or which one was used to make a particular recording. The thing about digital ATSC tuners is that if they can receive a strong enough signal, you shouldn't see any difference in the picture quality. When I set up the tuners in BeyondTV they both showed lower signal strength than my USB V-Box tuners.

BeyondTV does a scan of all channels in my area and flags them in the channel list if the signal strength is above a certain level. Both the 2250's and the HDHR failed to flag the vast majority of channels I receive from Washington, DC. The V-Box tuners were able to get all of them with an adequate signal, even though the output was split eight ways. I will be upgrading the UHF antenna aimed at DC this weekend so I expect the signal strengths for those channels will be increased to the point where I will be able to add them back into my channel listings.

The one thing you should be checking if you're dropping channels is whether you have a strong enough signal getting to the tuner. You should consider either going with a higher gain antenna or add a preamplifier into the antenna feed as close to the antenna as you can get it.

I would also like to know if anyone has tried 4.8. I wonder if it is just a repackage of the previous beta drivers. I downloaded it, but have not had the guts to try it since all seems fine with the ones I currently have. If anyone installs it, please let us know how it works and if there are any noticeable (good or bad) changes.

I've had one installed now in my HTPC with XP MCE for about a month and have been quite happy with it. Signal strength not an issue because I live close to the towers. Image quality is better than my DirecTV HD DVR that I was glad to get rid of.

That's not all that surprising when you consider that DirecTV is compressing and retransmitting the same signal that you're getting with no compression. HD locals are one of the reasons I dropped DirecTV in favor of FIOS as well as convincing me to go the HTPC route. DirecTV only offered four HD locals for Baltimore whereas I can get about 14 HD channels via OTA antenna from both Baltimore and Washington, DC.

I've been living with my 2250's and HDHR for about six weeks now and so far they've been pretty solid. Aside from some random stuttering, which I attributed to installing a booster amp from one of my antennas, reception has been quite good. All of my shows are being recorded with no major problems and sound and video are very good quality, which is about all I can ask for.

Ok, I need some help or at least some ideas. I was receiving two channels (neither of major significance, but would not mind having both) that I am now not receiving. Both still come in perfectly fine using the zenith converter box in the other room or when cable is connected directly to TV. I have changed nothing in my system. VMC will show they have solid signal strength, but when i try to change the channel to them, they both just freeze with no video and then bring up the no signal screen. Any ideas why these two channels, which I can receive on every other TV from the same Antenna, I cannot get now through the 2250 and VMC?

I don't know if it's the tuner in this card, how well it gets along with WMC or just a bad card, but....

I am running Vista-64 now with a brand new Hauppauge 2250 dual tuner connected to an RCA ANT1500 antenna. It just replaced a Hauppauge 1800 because I need the second tuner.

With the 1800, I was able to pull in all of my local stations at full strength according the Media Center's signal meter. I put in the new 2250 card and set up the TV signal in Media Center, but now I am not able to get a couple of the stations I got with the other card (1 measly red bar on the signal meter). Same antenna, same position. What's even stranger is that if I unscrew the coax connector to the card, those stations start to come in. So if the connector is BARELY touching, the stations work, but if I connect it securely, they're gone.

I may just have to try unscrewing my connector a little then. I have several stations that come in fine with a zenith converter box and my philips plasma that do not register at all with the 2250. Would be great if all it takes is loosening the connection a little to get them in . . . though it does make you wonder about the tuner for sure.

The problem with that solution (for me anyway) is that I had to unscrew it all the way...to where the connector is barely on there. So any draft or floor vibration caused the connection to come undone completely causing me to lose all TV signal. Maddening.

FWIW, I also noticed that when I have an FM antenna plugged in, I lose one of my stations. When I unplug it, station comes back.

I'm pretty sure this card is just a piece of junk. I'm sending it back to Newegg and I'll eat the 15% restocking fee.

So I put the HVR-1800 back in and all my stations are running perfectly. This confirms what I said in my last post. The only thing that changed is the card. The 1800 can do the job, the 2250 can not. By the way, with both cards, if I have an FM antenna plugged in, no CBS (local OTA). As soon as I unplug the FM, CBS works great. Weird.

Anyway, I guess I will continue my search for a better dual tuner.

I too am still searching for an effective TV tuner card but have been unable to determine exactly what they can and cannot do, even after looking at all of the posts in this thread. I toyed with prospects of ordering the 2250 but balked, not only after reading this thread but also after a bunch of NE reviews. So far, many of the reviews are from those who are willing to use an antenna to receive broadcast signals. I do not want to use any antenna.
I hope one of the owners here can tell me the following:
I want to watch TV on my PC, via cable (TimeWarner - no box -no antenna, just the cable alone - only 70+ channels
Will the 2250 allow me to see non-HD? How about HD, which are only the local channels that also have HD broadcasts, but still transmitted via the cable and viewable on my HD TV on similarly numbered but with extra identifying numbers.
Does anyone actually have a digital cable set top box (HDDVR)? If so, can you receive a picture, non-HD and HD through the set-top box and into the tuner card? That would increase the number of channels viewable on my PC to the same number as on my HD TV (multiple hundreds - example NBCHD would be 403 - analog NBC would be 003 -plus I would get 8 or 10 more HD stations than with the cable alone).

I'm by no means a master in this area, but I'll give you a little tutorial on tuner/capture cards. The Hauppauge 2250 is an ATSC/QAM tuner. If you connect a TV antenna to it, it will use the ATSC tuner to get digital broadcast channels. If you connect TimeWarner cable to it, then it will pull in unscrambled digital programming only. The channels available vary by location, but they are typically only the local channels and definitely not the full 70 channels. I'm not sure if an NTSC tuner card would give you more channels, but maybe someone else could help you out in that area. Even if it worked, and NTSC tuner would only pull in non-HD channels.

If you want to record from a device like the HD-DVR, then you'll want to get the Hauppauge HD PVR. If you simply want to watch the channels from your DVR on your computer monitor, then the solution really depends on what outputs you have from your DVR and what inputs your have on your computer monitor. In my case I connected my HD DVR with an HDMI-to-DVI cable to the monitor and a cable that converted the two RCA outs to one 3.5mm in on the computer's sound card.

Is anyone using the 2250 to receive QAM and NTSC in VMC?

I want to have 2 HD tuners and 2 SD tuners and I currently have an HDHomerun and two older PVR150MCE's.

I want to swap the 150MCE's with the single 2250 but though it would be really nice if I could run QAM for local HD and NTSC all from the 2250 so it would essentially give me 4 HD tuners and 2 SD tuners.

Thanks for the input.