Hauppauge 1139 WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid TV Stick External TV Tuner/Video Recorder for PC

List Price: $79.99 Discount Price: $56.99

Features:

• TV tuner allows for viewing and recording of television on PCs via USB 2.0
• Compatible with both digital and analog television signals
• Accepts video feeds directly from a camera or satellite box
• Small size makes it easy to carry and ideal for laptops
• Includes Personal Video Recorder software for scheduled recording of programs

Customer Reviews:

not working with vista [Posted on 2008-04-06]
I doesn't work well with my Vista business notebook. The program can freeze up on some channels and block you from going to other channels... I guess this is a software issue. Not yet ready, at least with Vista...

Small portable PVR, but has quality issues [Posted on 2008-04-12]
I think the best selling point of this PVR is that it's portable - and for that reason, this item may be great. However, I found that between this and the other full-size PCI board Hauppauge products (PVR 150, 250, 500 or others) - the quality of this picture paled in comparison to the other card outputs. I found it to be grainy and of low quality. So if you're buying this for a desktop PC - don't bother - and buy a Hauppauge 150 instead.

Consumes a fair bit of processing power. [Posted on 2008-04-20]
This product installed very easily.

The tuner also includes a dongle that allows you to input video, S-video and audio through the tuner. In addition to this, Hauppauge provides a small portable antenna that will bring in any over air digital signals but I have yet to see it work.

The picture is so-so but I have to remember that my screen resolution is much higher than the resolution of a TV signal. Therefore any fuzz you get is quite obvious on your screen.

The additional audio and video line in is handy to use with a cable box since the coax input will not accept cable or satellite signals, according to the specifications.

This item does see to generate a bit of heat when in use so I would make sure that it is not covered by anything.

I have a core-duo 2.2ghz processor with 4gb of ram and when I open the program that came with it, my processor immediately jumps up to 33%. Perhaps a TV card with on board processing would have been better.

Overall, this has been a fine product and I like the ability to use it on my desktop and laptop.

Good not perfect [Posted on 2008-04-28]
This product worked well to record tv shows but at times there were a lot of misses and ghosts of the people on tv. the scheduler is a nice feature to have and being USB bases is nice but this is not as good as the PCI based tv tuner cards out there.

The recorded image is much smoother then just watching the TV through the TV progam that is provided. Not really sure why the recorded picture would be better quality then non-recorded but it is.

this produce is not bad for the price and if you are using a laptop it is almost your only choice since you have to use USB but if you have a desktop and room for a PCI card i would go that way first.

I like it [Posted on 2008-05-11]
My model does differ from this in that I have the HVR-950Q, which I believe means it can support QAM channels.

It installed easily and wasn't difficult to setup.

My PC has the following specs: Windows XP Professional, Intel Core2 CPU 6420 @ 2.13GHz (2 CPUs), 1024MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS video card, 305 Gb HDD, 28" ViewSonic monitor.

I live approximatley 60 miles from Orlando and I was only able to pick up 1 channel with the supplied antenna, so I connected my cable and It works as it should, picture looks good, there's no delay in the video and audio and I am overall impressed. I run Internet Explorer version 7.x and watch TV with no problems. I even had WIn Media Player playing a video, while surfing the net and watching TV, and had no problems.

One thing I've noticed is that when changing QAM channels, it takes longer to change the channel than non QAM. Usually there's a 2 second delay to actually get to the channel you want.

Also, the video recorder (DVR) uses a TON of hard drive space. 1 minute took up 50 Mb's in both recording settings.

One word of caution: I purchased a new in box HVR-850, but once I opened the box, there was a HVR-950Q with a note from the manufacturer stating the 850's were out of stock. This, in my opinion was a good thing, because I don't think the 850 supported QAM channels. Those, I've noticed have a higher quality picture.

I was looking for an option to clear up some space in my office and this enabled me to get rid of the TV. I now have the one (big) monitor, but it serves a dual purpose as the computer monitor and TV. Got the wireless keyboard and mouse and I'm ready!

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