Hauppage HVR-2250 Owner's Thread - Page 2

Anyone??

I'm not sure what you mean by NTSC? In VMC you have 3 input choices: OTA, ClearQAM and analog cable. The 2250 only has one TV Tuner input, so you have to choose either OTA or cable. If you choose cable, you can set it up 3 different ways. 2 analog tuners, 2 Digital ClearQAM tuners or 1 analog and 1 Digital ClearQAM. Whichever method you choose, you can only use 2 tuners at any one time. The new Windows 7 beta does enable the 2250's Hybrid Tuner capability. This allows you to set up each of the 2250's dual tuners as both ClearQAM and Analog, giving you 2 ClearQAM and 2 Analog tuners to mix and match on the fly, but still limited to a maximum of 2 tuners at any one time.

I've tried all of the configurations listed above with my 2250 and they all worked out fairly well. If you post more specifics about your setup and cable lineup, I'm sure you can find a solution that will work for you.

I have been researching the 2250 for use with BeyondTV and a new system I have on order. I think what I am looking to do may be similar to what greg_mitch wants:

My thought is to split my incoming cable (FiOS) and connect both directly to the 2250 and to my cable box, then connect s-video out from the cable box to the s-video input on the 2250. The idea is to record the local clearQAMs in HD using one tuner as a digital tuner and recording everything else in SD using the other tuner as an analog tuner.

I don't know about your specific example, but I'm pretty sure that the 2250 cannot tune two different kinds of signal (i.e. QAM and ATSC) at the same time. Both tuners must be used for the same kind of signal. I could be wrong, and it might be different with using s-video, so good luck with that.

Analog cable = NTSC
Digital Cable = QAM
Digital OTA = ATSC

I want to do in VMC what you mentioned is now supported in Windows 7 Beta. I read elsewhere that there were drivers for making the 2250 become 2 hybrid tuners that would tune QAM and NTSC on the same tuner. Just curious if anyone else has tried that with VMC...as I don't really want to have my daily driver be Windows 7 at this time.

Anyone? TIA

I have a 2250, and I had nothing but trouble on VMC. Installed Win7, and the thing was running before I had a chance to even grab a coke. Drivers installed with the OS installation, and W7MC detected NTSC/QAM 2x2 right away.

Something to note for people that might not know otherwise, any time you add a splitter, you cut the incomming signal to the cards by half. If you had a cable into the back of your tv, and then added a splitter, you are getting half the RF power you used to on both devices.

That being said, historically the sensitivity of tuner cards has seemed to always be lower than the sensitivity of TV's. But, if you are not running through 16 different 4 way splitters, you should have enough power. If you dont, call your cable company, and they should take a look at it.

Please post the driver version number from windows update.

Thanks
Scat

That is good and bad news. I would like VMC to figure this out too. I will probably just end up waiting it out for 7MC to be officially released as I don't feel like using it as my daily driver just yet.

I just completed building my first PVR which uses the 2250 tuner card. Reception and everything are as expected, but I'm having two definite issues:

1) I have the new Samsung 7000 series LED 55" tv. While watching tv normally, it has very nice rich blacks and the color is perfect. When I watch live tv or recorded video via the 2250, my tv is very contrasty like the contrast or brightness is out of whack.

2) When I watch live tv or recorded video via the 2250, the video resolution is not correct for "HD" tv. I have two vertical bars one each side of the screen. This is even if its set to 16x9. This occurs in both the WinTV & Windows Media software, so it has something to do with the card I'm assuming.

Being that I'm new at this, I'm in uncharted waters and need some guidance. Any ideas on resolving these two issues would be much appreciated!

Thanks

I've had two 2250's in my HTPC for several months now and I've been experiencing extreme pixellisation using these tuners. In all fairness I also have a HDHomeRun connected that may be the culprit but I have no way of determining which tuner was used to record the broadcast signal after the fact. The screen will frequently go all green and pixellate badly before settling down to a normal picture. I knew during setup that the signal level from both brands of tuner was low so this really shouldn't have been that much of a surprise.

I've played around with signal boosters and attenuators from my antenna and the signal is either too strong or too weak. The thing is, I never had this problem with my V-Box USB tuners. In fact, the V-Box tuners were absolutely perfect and showed a much stronger signal in the exact same setup. I have two rooftop antennas pointed in opposite directions and joined with a standard UHV/VHF splitter/combiner.

I am about 10 miles from the Baltimore broadcast towers and about 30+ miles from the ones in Washington, DC, so I should be getting ample signal strength without the use of any boosters. I do have the antenna lead going through an 8-way splitter, which no doubt attenuates the signal to a level where the 2250s and HDHR don't like it. However, boosting the signal causes more problems than it solves.

The short story is that I'm uninstalling the 2250s and HDHR and going back to my tried and true V-Box tuners. I have no doubt that either type of tuner would perform admirably with the right signal level feeding them. For ther most part the picture quality is excellent and I'd stick with them if not for the annoying artifacts.

My 2250 has been solid for ATSC (haven't tried NTSC/QAM) except for one channel that pixelizes. I'm going to try some attenuators after looking at the post regarding the partial disconnect getting a better signal. I have an RCA3020 on the roof and live about 15 miles from the towers. All other tuners in the house are rock solid.

The WinTV software is a joke, WMC works much better.

I'll chime in.

I have 2250 installed in an HTPC, and only using it for OTA ATSC. I have a DB4 antenna in the attic, and it feeds via amplified splitter to the PC and 2 other HDTVs. I have XP Home, latest drivers for the card. Btw, I heard nothing but woes from 64bit OS users. I think Hauppage drivers don't like 64 bit.

WinTV(any version of it) is utter crap. Ditch it.

As I have XP Home, and did not want to change my OS, I opted for a 3rd party PVR software, and I went with SageTV. It rocks.

The scanning process is really no good - not sure what to blame here, hardware of software. A digital channel scan gives back a paltry 2-5 channels. HDTVs scan same input and get a full gamut of channels. However, when you try to tune into a channel manually using proper physical channel number (i.e. WCBSDT 2.1 physical channel is 56 so full channel designation is 56.2.1), it tunes into it beautifully. What this means is one needs to spend about 30 minutes to manually map all the channels to their proper physicals. A pretty simple thing to do in SageTV, not sure how WinTV or any version of MC does it. Once I set it up, it has worked great. I set the recording quality to best - so it records full 720p MPEG2s with 5.1 audio, about 3GB/hour. If your recordings look bad, check your quality settings.

About the problem where screwing the cable tight caused problems: appaently, the antenna connector on 2250 is flimsy, and tends to snap off when it has to 'fight' the thick rigid coax cable. Chances are yours has snapped off and is really held by central lead only - and when cable is not rigidly attached, the connector can 'reseat' itself for proper contact. Mine also snappped off, and I fixed the problem by using 2 retainer nuts to rigidly couple it to the card's backplate. If you are planning to buy the card, I really advise you get a couple of those nuts from Home Depot or Radio Shack and secure the antenna connector to the back plate BEFORE it snaps off. (Remove the backplate, thread one nut on the connector, reinstall backplate, thread on 2nd nut, tighten nuts against backplate)

Those aside, the card is a solid performer when used with good software.

Quick question. Will I be able to record all HD channels if I hook this up from the output of my cable box. I currently have a cable dvr box but I would like a way to be able to archive my recordings which is not possible from my cable dvr. Thanks.

You can record off the box using the capture portion of the card but it will only be in SD quality.You need something like this to capture HD off the box.

Looks like a nice price, SD quality didnt seem too bad for me so this should help out a lot

Thanks that helped out alot. I am only interested in the video capture of HD programs. There are so many HD channels available now that I very rarely watch anything on SD anymore because I can't stand the terrible picture quality on the large HD tvs.
What about HDMI. Is there any kind of HDMI HD PVR available.

There is the Black Magic Intensity but it is designed for (semi-)production captures, not an HTPC. Also, if your STB's HDMI output is copy protected (most likely), it will not work. There is another thread on the BM Intensity.

This thread is being resurrected because I need advice from owners of the HVR-2250. I'm thinking about using this card with two antennas, since in my market the stations are in two directions. So while watching/recording on multiple sources, I want to be able to:

1. Record two sources from antenna A.
2. Record two sources from antenna B.
3. Record from both antenna A and antenna B.

I know the software would have to be configured properly, but is this card capable of providing a signal in each of those scenarios?

You can't connect 2 different antennas at the same time. There is only one RF input for TV signals. The second RF input on the card is only used for FM radio.

Im not having any luck with this card and windows 7 premium RTM. With 7MC, I keep getting the error about not having an IR receiver hooked up, even when I do have the included IR receiver installed. I read where you can first install an analog ota config and then go back and set up the dish network input, but that doesnt work. It also says if you are using only one tuner to use tuner 1. Tried that also.. still no go. Whats the deal here?

I am having problems installing the Hauppage 2250 tuner card. I have Windows XP MCE. I can't get MCE to allow me to setup the card for ATSC digital off-the-air. When I select 'antenna' in MCE setup it only shows NTSC analog and terrestrial PAL NTSC as the only two options. Selecting NTSC finds 1 station (oddly) since analog is no longer broadcast in the USA since June, 2009.

I have read that I need to setup an analog tuner first, then come back and setup an ATSC digital one. When I go back, the ATSC option is still not there.

I have tried both the tuner card driver on the CD ROM and the lastest from the website.

Digital QAM using my basic cable does work with the included WinTV7 software so I know the card work a little bit.

Looks like most use Windows 7 MCE. Would all my problems go away if I upgrade?

1) I have been using the PVR-150 and have had no problems with it on this new, very capable, PC. I Love this product and use it 24/7.

2) Of course like all PC nuts, It was time to upgrade. I purchased the Model 01213: WinTV-HVR-2250 Media Center Kit. I have had nothing but trouble setting it up on same PC used with the 150. Problems:

a: Cannot get the Auxiliary Input to be recognized. The Main card inputs do work.

b: All inputs have very low volume. My PC and Input device volumes are maxed out, including external speaker volume. The S-Video and Composite volumes are worse. All my PC Drivers are up-to-date.

c: When recording video from external device, such as camcorder or TV, the volume is so low you can barely hear it. I did not have this problem with the 150.

d: Can you record in any other format? It seems to only be able to record in the one format, the TS File..??

Recently I installed a 2250 into a Gigabyte 790 based HTPC?Server system running with the onboard GPU (ATI3300) which I plan to upgrade to a 5000 series card when they reach my price point.

I've installed the latest drivers and the WinTv7 app from the Hauppauge site running on 64bit Win7 Pro.

When using MCE live video on the digital channels stutters unless I reduce the deinterlace settings of the GPU (I use automatic mostly). This behaviour does not happen with WinTv7. Now I'm not overly familiar with MCE as I'm more a file menu type so the interface is not intuitive to me. Are ther settings that are hidden (from me at least) that allow codec choice, use of hardware acceleration et al that I could play with to ameliorate this problem?

Does anyone have MCE running properly with the 2250 in a 64 bit system? or is this a problem with the Hauppauge drivers not working well on 64 bit systems?

Any comments will be appreciated.
thanks,
ted

I installed a Hauppauge 2250 tuner card in my Windows 7 Home Premium (64bit) HTPC, and I've been fighting with the TV signal setup for a couple days now.

I have been using Windows Media Center 7 (WMC7) for my setup. I first tried connecting it from the RF bypass on my Comcast set top box (STB) with no success. I then tried connecting the included audio/video adapter to the composite out of my STB, and I finally saw a video signal during the detection process. Now it's telling me to hook up an IR cable to complete the setup. The Hauppauge card IR input accepts a different plug than the STB IR output, so I'm working to procure a cable and an adapter.

My question is why do I see almost all my Comcast channels on my kitchen flat panel TV (which is connected directly to the wall outlet), but WMC7 setup can't find any channels when my 2250 is connected in the same way (that is of course, the RF bypass on my STB is the same as directly plugging it into the wall)?

Has anyone had similar problems with this card?

Thanks in advance.

Can someone tell me if the IR receiver from the bundled version of HVR-2250 is stand alone or not? Is it USB? Can I use it separately on another PC?

I'm in the market for a tuner card and I don't need to record any premium HD channels. Is the 2250 the card to get? Or is there a better one out there?

I'd like to be able to record two HD QAM channels at once, I don't need to be watching a third.

Unfortunately No..It is not a USB, but an 1/8" jack that plugs into the card itself. The problem I have, and drives me crazy, is the remote is WMC based. When I want to raise the voloume, for Example, it also affects my XBox 360 and my laptop (Vista with Windows Media Center). In return, the XBox and my other PC remote affect the 2250 WinTV7 app. I hope this answers your question and does not discourage you. I am still working out all those little annoyances..lol

If you have not purchased it yet..You may find more about it at this forum..It has taken me some time, but I have just about worked out all the bugs with the 2250 package..

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...2250-TV-Tuner?