Just about the pull the trigger on that warmly received
AVerTV Bravo Hybrid, are you? Hold your horses just a moment. Hauppauge's WinTV-HVR-2250 recently hit the test bench over at
PC Magazine, and we'll just get right down to the dirt: it was called "the gold standard of home theater PC TV tuners." That's right folks, the gold standard. Said card boasts twin hybrid tuners, dual hardware MPEG encoders and integrated QAM support, and apparently, using it was a real joy. Setup and installation was "a snap," and image quality was "crisp and clear." Really, the only dig reviewers had was that the QAM plug-in was still a bit unstable, but given that it is
still in beta, that really shouldn't come as a surprise. Of note, this card will run you a touch more than the aforementioned AVerTV at $129, but it just might be worth it based on this glowing review.
posted Jun 21st 2008 11:57PM
Anybody know when this thing is hitting the street?
Does ths work wth VMC via QAM ? I use the ATI TV wonder w Cablecard now , but it would be nice to get a few more tuners
It was mentioned in the article. It was the talk of the beta plugin.
Sounds promising, but don't count on the driver for QAM coming out of beta anytime soon, or maybe ever. Hauppauge is notorious for bad support (the HVR-1600 driver is still in beta), and if you want full 64-bit support, ferget-it.
I have a Hauppage USB analogue / digital tuner and the software is pretty rotten. It works, but it wouldn't win any prizes for usability or good design. The channel tuner is atrocious and there is no consistency in the suite of apps, or evidence that its ever been through usability testing. Why do companies do this? Great hardware is no good if the software is junk.
One problem with this board ... it is advertised on Hauppauge's website that:
Dual everything!
Two analog tuners with dual hardware MPEG-2 encoders.
Two digital TV receivers for ATSC and clear QAM
However, this is misleading. There are only two hybrid tuner chips on this board. Each can tune analog or digital, but only one at a time. When you actually read ths 2250's manual, it explicitly states:
"The WinTV-HVR-2250 has two tuners and can be used to watch one analog or ATSC digital channel in Media Center while recording another channel of the same type."
So, what I infer from the manual is that you can ONLY watch (a) two digital channels at once, or (b) two analog channels at once. You cannot watch one analog and one digital, and certainly you do not have "four" tuners, despite having "dual everything!"
Am I wrong?