Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 950

[phamra]

I picked one of these up yesterday at CompUSA for a Benjamin ($100). Not a great deal and I may even return it, especially if I can't get it to work with GBPVR. I bought it for my new kitchen counter laptop to watch live tv and to toy with ATSC (OTA HD). Can't say much about the ATSC since the little antenna doesn't pick up much very well from where I live. It's certainly better than my WinTV-USB2 which has painful video/audio sync issues over USB and is not nearly as cute.

My main concern is that GBPVR isn't working right with it. It appears as a listed BDA Recording Plugin Device Type but none of the channels stick. The "Enabled" check boxes for all the channels clears itself no matter what I do. Live TV reports that there are no channels.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks,
Peter

[sub]

With digital devices you need to click the 'map digital channels to epg channels' button to let it scan for channels.

[phamra]

Sub

Thanks for the reply. I tried what you suggested and it scanned for digital channels, of which I can receive way too few to be concerned with now. That is until I get myself an appropriately expensive antenna. It actually found no digital channels because I have it hooked up to my basic cable TV service.

This device supports analog reception that I'm hoping to use GBPVR with. I have it hooked up to my cable TV service and it works better than my old WinTV USB 2.0 unit; audio is in sync with video using WinTV2000, the Hauppauge TV viewing application. I was hoping that GBPVR would work with the analog side of this device. Can it? I still see that behavior of the Config app not keeping any of the check boxed channels that my EPG has listed for me.

Am I asking too much from this little USB stick? If so, can you recommend another USB tuning device? I'm thinking the WinTV-PVR-USB2 will be my better bet since it's a hardware based USB tuning device which Windows MCE can take advantage of too. It's more money and much larger in size (not that size matters that much in this case.

Of course, nothing beats GBPVR. The "Configure this machine to act as a client" option has made it possible for any of my computers to be a TV. That is truly fantastic. Many thanks for that addition.

One last thing. Any thoughts of adding a recording conflicts resolver like MCE has? You list your recurring programs' priorities and the PVR would choose the program that is higher priority of those that are scheduled to record at a point in time. It makes the decision to record the one you'd rather have. That would be quite nice.

Thanks again.

[sub]

Thanks for the reply. I tried what you suggested and it scanned for digital channels, of which I can receive way too few to be concerned with now. That is until I get myself an appropriately expensive antenna. It actually found no digital channels because I have it hooked up to my basic cable TV service.

Its a digital OTA device, which means it'll only receive channels through an antenna, not through a cable connection, so its not surprising it didnt find any digital channels.

I was hoping that GBPVR would work with the analog side of this device. Can it?

To be honest, I dont know. This device is very new, and no one has tested it it with GB-PVR. It does lack the hardware MPEG2 encoder, usually found on analog capture devices like the PVR150 etc, but if you're lucky it might work.

I still see that behavior of the Config app not keeping any of the check boxed channels that my EPG has listed for me.

This is normal for a BDA capture source, when you've not done the 'map digital channels to EPG channels' step.

For the analog side of this device, you'd need to create another capture source using the 'direct recording plugin'.