Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1600 and 3rd party capture software?

[NukeyDoo]

Hi all

This card came with my new pc, and it works just fine with Vista's Media Center, but when I try to use it with any other software, it just shows a black screen in the program where the video screen is. I took time to email Hauppauge and this is what was said:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: HVR-1600 Issue
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:22:53 -0400
From: FAzar@hauppauge.com


Hello,

The unit cannot be used in the third party programs due to the following issue with the hardware

The WinTV-HVR records directly to MPEG using onboard Hardware encoders. Most third party capture applications are looking to attach to a card or driver that supports uncompressed video recordings. Like AVI files. These programs cannot capture video directly using the HVR.

Regards

fazar@hauppauge.com


Hauppauge Computer Works, New York

http://www.hauppauge.com

Please include previous correspondence on reply.

Sent: lundi 24 septembre 2007 15:01
To: techsupport@hauppauge.com
Subject: HVR-1600 Issue

Hello,

I have an HVR-1600 that came built into my HP computer. I have had an ATI TV Wonder VE in the past that, any program I needed would easily find the card, signal, etc., and have no issues. For some reason with the HVR-1600, no program I've used yet, will successfully use the tuner card.

A couple programs I've tried so far are Virtual Dub and Intervideo WinDVD Creator 3. They both detect the actual card itself, however, no signal shows in the display windows of what is on the tv at the moment. Windows Media Center itself uses the card fine, but I need to be able to record things off the television.

What am I missing?

Thanks!

My question is, does anyone here know of some sort of hack, 3rd party drivers (or ANYTHING) that will make this card of actual USE to me? I would definitely appreciate help with this.

Thanks in advance!

[Baldrick]

Check at www.shspvr.com but I guess you are out of luck of you want to use virtualdub, windvd creator. But some tools should support it like gbpvr.

[jagabo]

Maybe Sage TV or Beyond TV.

[jman98]

Did this card not come with capturing software from Hauppauge? Because I have the PVR-350 and it certainly did. I can't imagine that Hauppauge would not give you a capturing program, so do you mind explaining why you refuse to use their program?

Most 3rd party programs record in AVI format and it appears from what Hauppauge told you that your card can't record in AVI format. Mine can't either. jagabo's suggestions are probably your only hope if you refuse to use the software Hauppauge probably gave you.

[SHS]

NukeyDoo if you wish to do manual capturing just download WinTV Lite CD from here http://www.shspvr.com/smf/index.php?topic=11002.0 and need keep in mind that WinTV-HVR and some WinTV-PVR only records directly to MPEG-1/2 using onboard Hardware Encoders.
Note that if you change out your card with some other card there a good chances that MCE will no longer work becuase MCE will only use Hardware Encoders.
There are other 3rdparty software SageTV, BeyondTV and GB-PVR and few other that if you don't like MCE DRM junk.

[donschjr]

I'm currently using the retail version of this card with GBPVR and it works very well.

[NukeyDoo]

Ok, thank you all very much for the useful links and info.

jman, I didn't 'refuse' anything. No Hauppauge software came with my HP system. Apparently they (HP) expected me to just use Media Center for everything. I was not even aware of any Hauppauge software and as you can see from their email, they still never even bothered making mention of some software. I suppose I could of searched their site for some, but I was already in the frame of mind to use any of the myriad of other capturing programs already in the market.

My other question is, is there a noticable quality loss of capturing as mpg, and then recoding into a better format, such as divx or xvid? Those are the 2 formats I usually compress into (on my old tv wonder card)

[jagabo]

is there a noticable quality loss of capturing as mpg, and then recoding into a better format, such as divx or xvid? Those are the 2 formats I usually compress into (on my old tv wonder card)

The first problem you'll have is most of your NTSC captures will be interlaced (live video sources) or telecined (film sources). You probably don't want interlaced Divx/Xvid files so you'll have to deinterlace or inverse telecine.

There will be some loss from the deinterlacing/IVTC and from the recompression. You can minimize this by capturing at very high MPEG2 bitrates (as high as 15,000 kbps) then converting from that.