HVR-2250 First Impression

[Anthony]

I just got a new HVR-2250 to suppliment my HVR-1600 cards.

The first thing I noticed was how much smaller the card was than the HVR-1600's. Instead of big clunky tuner cans on the card, there's just a couple of tiny white boxes.

My HVR-1600's could never lock on to QAM cable reliably, so I decided to try it with the HVR-2250. I was pleasantly surprised to find a 100% quality on all channels in WinTV and so far every station has been perfect. I will need to have a few days of recordings before I'm completely at ease with it, but it's much more promising than my HVR-1600's.

So, I'm running the digital side of my two HVR-1600's off of an outdoor antenna. And I connected the dual tuner HVR-2250 to my cable. I'm no longer using the analog tuners of the 1600 and am only tuning digital channels on the HVR-2250. No more analog for me!

I'm using the current "beta" driver for the HVR-2250 download from the Hauppauge web site.

Anthony

[pcostanza]

What OS are you running? I'm going to assume XP since things are working so well for you.
I'm pleased with the card itself but my problems have been with Vista and W7 and many feel it's TVPack related. My only gripes have been on the analog side where the picture will drop out or the sound will become garbled no matter the decoder used. Some drivers are better for this than others but then the ones good for analog don't seem to work for me in QAM. Also, the analog files are smaller and don't seem as good to me as my 1600 and my PVR500. But, I'm watching less and less of analog these days anyway.

[darisb]

I just brought up a new system with a 2250 last weekend. Made the mistake of installing the old drivers on the supplied CD and could only scan two channels. Upgraded to the lates Beta drives, and scanned all of the local OTA channels. Otherwise I'm please with the card. I only use the digital tuners at the moment. Picture looks great and the audio/video synch is better than it ever was with the 150 and 500. I'll probably pick up as second 2250 next month.

[Anthony]

Yep, I'm running XP. I have Vista on my laptop for testing my software, but I have no desire to use it as my main OS.

I watched a couple of shows I recorded off of cable last night, and it does look like there are a few dropouts and signal problems in the recordings. I'll have to keep an eye on it and see how bad it gets.

I didn't even bother with the included CD. I went right to the Hauppauge web site and downloaded the latest files there.

Is there any way to change the tuner source order in the config app? Right now the 2250 sources are first, and I'd prefer the HVR-1600 sources to be chosen first.

Anthony

[bholio]

Yep, I'm running XP. I have Vista on my laptop for testing my software, but I have no desire to use it as my main OS.

I watched a couple of shows I recorded off of cable last night, and it does look like there are a few dropouts and signal problems in the recordings. I'll have to keep an eye on it and see how bad it gets.

I didn't even bother with the included CD. I went right to the Hauppauge web site and downloaded the latest files there.

Is there any way to change the tuner source order in the config app? Right now the 2250 sources are first, and I'd prefer the HVR-1600 sources to be chosen first.

Anthony

I'm working on getting my 2250 working on GBPVR, still experimenting at this point.

However, I've noticed that there are 2 'blank' buttons below 'Remove' in the 'Capture Source' screen of config. Poking on those moves the currently selected source up and down in the list. I guess it is some sort of priority ordering. I'm not sure.

I'm still working through a multitude of problems & points of confusion with GBPVR and the 2250, eventually I'll get sorted enough to post about them. I'm very new to PC based PVR, as I have been happily using replayTV for the last 5 or so years.

[gunterhausfrau]

I'm still running into the occational problem with mine. Had it working, but last time I tried to schedule two shows to record at the same time I got the old conflict, cancel one of them. I also had one case where there was some error in the resulting file so that if I let it play it worked fine (as far as I got) but if I tried to skip ahead, it would stop playing.

more fiddling needed on my side I suspect.

[Anthony]

I've been using my HVR-2250 for more than a week now and it's working quite well. The dropouts must have been random signal issues because I haven't noticed any problems since that first night.

I have also received the "conflict" message a few times when picking shows. I have two HVR-1600 tuners and the two tuners in the HVR-2250 (I'm only using digital, no analog). Occasionally I get the conflict message when trying to record three shows at once, even though all four tuners can access all of the selected channels. I did bump the HVR-1600 tuners to the top of the source list and it "seems" like the conflict issue occurs a lot less, but I can't confirm it or explain why.

Overall I'm quite happy with the HVR-2250, and have had FAR fewer problems than I did initially with the HVR-1600's. I have abandoned analog TV entirely and am really enjoying the quality of all digital recordings.

Anthony

[McBainUK]

However, I've noticed that there are 2 'blank' buttons below 'Remove' in the 'Capture Source' screen of config. Poking on those moves the currently selected source up and down in the list. I guess it is some sort of priority ordering. I'm not sure.

The general idea is that when GB-PVR is looking for Live TV sources it looks top->bottom and when it is looking for recording sources it looks bottom->top.

[cgilson33]

So it's been about 2 months now... what does everyone think of this tuner card??
I have one and like it a lot, but don't have any experience with other cards
I do think the analog is a lesser quality than the tuner in my tv, is there anything I can do to help this?
My QAM picks up everything and the quality is very good, however I do get some blurring a small amount but definitely noticeable especially when watching basketball
This probably has more to do with my video setup but...
What decoders is everyone using?

[mulletback]

I got a 2250 because my 1600 1) wouldn't tune all my clear QAM stations, 2) failed to record about 20% of the time. The 2250 tunes all stations, even ESPN radio (which isn't even in my cable listings). The recordings are very high quality and none have failed.

I use only the analog side of the 1600 now, and the remote. I use only the digital side of the 2250 - I also have a PVR500 for analog. Cyberlink decoders.