Hauppauge WinTV DCR-2650 Dual Cable Card Tuner For US Market! - Page 6

Finally got in touch with Hauppauge yesterday. I ended up calling after my e-mail went unanswered for over 48 business hours...Unfortunately, I am no closer to a solution and may be sending the unit back and buying the Ceton device. Hauppauge basically said that the setup I have should theoretically work, but they have never done any testing with an XBox as an extender, so they don't even know where to look for fixing issues with it. The issue has been sent to the dev team, but I didn't get a warm fuzzy that it was going to be a priority for them to fix. I will probably give them a week and then cut my losses.

Quick question, I'm going to have one pc setup as HTPC (Win 7) running this tuner in the basement to a projector. Can I use another Win 7 PC as an extender in a bedroom to watch live tv? I know you can share recordings but I want live TV available in the bedroom. I do have a xbox 360 but that's in living room which already has a verizon DVR box. ( got it free for life deal on the DVR. Thanks!

Win7 PCs are not extenders, so no (biggest mistake MS made with WMC, IMO).

Hauppauge has indicated that they support bridging the WinTV-DCR-2650 on their proudct FAQ. There has been no instruction given for how to do this and when the interface is bridged in Windows 7, the tuner is no longer accessible so it appears that this functionality has not been enabled in the current driver.

Thanks for the answers. Have people seen good results using an xbox 360 as an extender? Network would be wired gigabit.

I have not had good luck at all (you can read about it in this thread), also using gigabit LAN.

I'm looking at buying one of these guys I have time warner. Do you guys know if I just need an m card or also a tuning adapter?

You will need an m-card and you will need to check with your cable company if they require a tuning adapter.

Thank you.

Ahh ok I figured it out. I had the very first version of Extend installed, it only gave me the option of changing bitrate, not resolution. I downloaded the update from Hauppauge, and now I see those settings, AND I can schedule recordings and playback recordings, awesome.

FYI - Hauppauge put out a new beta firmware yesterday afternoon and my 2650 has been working flawlessly since then, streaming to multiple XBox360 extenders and recording TV shows.

thanks!

Hauppauge released beta version 29255 which correlates with Silicondust 20111125 firmware. I installed it on two 2650s and other than having to reboot after install, things have been stable.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/suppor..._dcr-2650.html

• Includes major updates to the Tuning Adapter driver
• Fixes some problems where Media Center indicates "No tuner available"
• Fix problem where copy-protection could be incorrectly applied to some channels when not required.
• Fix problem causing unit to stop responding after a several hundred channel changes.
• Fix problem causing unit to stop responding after Tuning Adapter was removed/inserted/reset several hundred times.
• Improvements to diagnostic support.

I just got one of these and every once in awhile the picture will jump once and the sound will cut for a few seconds. Is this an issue with anyone elses tuner or with my computer?

Im thinking its my computer getting lagged behind the DVR functionality because I can rewind and that segment plays back perfectly fine. Its like my computer is recording the feed and then playing the recording but sometimes it isnt fast enough to record and play in real time so I get a buffer. If it was the tuner choking up I doubt it would keep recording everything without a skip.

This is my first DVR too so I dont know if its a common problem with recording live TV while youre watching it.

Apart from that everything has worked perfectly and it switches channels about twice as fast as the cable box.

that does sound more like a computer issue than a tuner issue to me. Make sure your video drivers are at the latest version, that might help.

I switched the recording location to another HDD and didnt encounter it all night, previously it was like once an hour and it was on the oldest HDD I had (200gb, do they even make those anymore?). So it must have been the HDD speed.

The tuner with the late october firmware has been flawless so far, all the problems Ive had have been computer issues and getting WMC working correctly, no fault of the tuner.

Installed my 2650 to my HTPC and had Time Warner tech come out and install the M-Card. The tech was pretty knowlogable, as in a real geek like me, .
We got the m-card working fine and when we went thru the channel tuning in Media Center we were not able to pull any of the Analog cable signals (channels 0-70) on either tuner. All the "Digital" signals seem to work fine but this is going to be an issue for me as Speedvision and some other channels I like are on the analog portion of my cable.

Anyone run into a similar issue?

I've read about "switched digital video" and as to if I need the conversion adapter unit from Time Warner for this but after checking with their website and entering my Zip code it says not needed in my area. Not too advanced or loaded down cable here in South East Alabama.

I have a 2250 TV card also but would rather not have to install it to get the analog channels. Then again that might be a cool setup if I can get all the tuners working in media center and recording in 2X2.

Thanks

Make sure you're updated to the latest firmware. They've addressed a number of "channel missing" bugs with each update.

Might as well throw in the other tuner. I have 3 atsc tuners along with the 3 from the prime. The ATSC ones don't get used much but whenever I record something on broadcast tv I use them to free up the others.

Right good point. Thanks

I installed the latest drivers from the link a few pages back of this forum.

amazon lightning deal for 2 hours

Well I'm finally going to jump into the cablecard home dvr system. I was going to get the hdhomerun prime but now that some have confirmed that you can use an xbox 360 as an extender for this I'm going to jump on the current amazon lightning deal. I can get 2 of these and it will still be cheaper than a single hdhrp or ceton and will have 4 tuners. Hopefully I'll have this up and running by next week.

Thanks for this post. This helped me make my decision in buying one of these. Now my only setup issue is to try and get tv in a bedroom where I only have a win7 pc.

Is it possible to share a tuner with this win7 pc with one of these tuners? I will have 2 dcr-2650 in other rooms in the house and use extenders to reach the other bedrooms but this last bedroom is the one I can't figure out how to get liveTV to. Any ideas? I know the HDHRP can do this since it is more 'networked' but I am hoping others have found a way to do this using this device.

If you share a tuner to the pc in the bedroom (when the functionality is available) that tuner will be stuck to that pc, meaning 1 tuner to each pc, it will not dynamically switch. This is how the ceton's work. So basically if you already have a pc up in that bedroom connected to the tv, get another DCR-2650, if not get an extender.

OK, so I've been up all night realizing my HD cable box has died, and since I've only had it for 11 days since the last one I swapped out, it's really getting annoying.

Reading about the WinTV, it sounds like a godsend to me.

But I have some questions as I seek to replace the pathetic Motorola cable boxes that Atlantic Broadband issues.

1) In the room with my computer, I have a 46" Samsung HDTV. While I could easily use the monitor screen, I'd prefer to be able to use this TV I just bought a few months ago to watch my TV. How do I integrate it into the system?

I don't have a network set up, because this is the only computer in the house, so its connection is direct to the modem. Would I need to establish a wired network in order to use my TV with the Hauppauge and run an ethernet cable from the TV to a router?

Is there any way I could just directly hook the TV into the WinTV without using the TV as my computer monitor? Could I take the DVI out and have a splitter with a switch to let the signal go to the TV?

Would it be better to just build an HTPC and hook that directly into the TV without using my normal computer?

While CableCards have their issues, I'm thinking this might be more reliable for receiving an HD signal and would save me the pain of having to deal with the stupid boxes.

Connect the tv to the computer via hdmi, assuming your computer has an hdmi output.


The tv does not need to be connected to the network. The computer with the tuner does need to be connected to the network, in order for Windows Media Center to be able to set up the guide and download guide info.


No, that's the whole point of this tuner, its a usb tuner, there are no video outputs.


There is no dvi out of the tuner, only usb to a computer.


That depends, when watching tv, you wont be able to use the computer for anything else. The advantage to a standalone htpc is it can be used only for tv watching to your tv.

you can unmaximize the window and do other things, I do it all the time and like it a lot better than before when I had to switch inputs entirely to do something on the computer, its like having picture in picture.

the biggest advantage to a purpose built htpc is lower power consumption, which will save money on electricity. I don't know how much money it will save or if the savings will pay for buying a $400 htpc, my guess is it will take years to save that much in electricity which is not really a savings in my eyes. It will also look like a piece of home theater equipment instead of a computer.

I just Ordered one of these from Amazon! I have Time Warner Cable, and was wondering if I have to have a tech come out and install the cable cards into the tuner? I dont want to have to pay 30 bucks just to have the guy come out and slap 2 cards into the Hauppauge and then leave. Will TWC even give me the cards to do it myself?

Is there anything I need to know to get this setup properly? I plan on running the cablecard wizard in Win 7, also update to the latest Hauppauge drivers.

Thanks
Flan

Not sure, most cable companies will want their installer to do it. However, some times if you ask nicely and tell them that you know what you are doing, you may not have to.


FYI, its only one card.


Not sure again, the only way to find out is to call and ask. My cable company let me pick them up from the office and install myself.

I forget exactly when it happened this fall (August?) but FCC rules went into effect that require a cableco to allow self-install of cablecards if they, the cableco, allow installation of any other equipment, i.e., DVRs or settop boxes. If you encounter problems with a CSR you may have to escalate but I had no problems with Cox in Phoenix and they had never before been inclined to do anything they weren't required to (see Copy Once flag applied everywhere except locals).