capture VHS with Hauppauge PVR 150?

[shun]

Does anyone know any free software that will work with this card for capturing composite video and RCA audio? I have no idea how to work with the included WinTV software, or if it even works with Windows 7.

[dfisher052]

I have this card & use the software that came with it to transfer VHS to MPEG2, but I'm using XP. This is now a rather old card and my not work with 7. Have you gone on Hauppauge's web site to see if there is an update?

[jman98]

The PVR 150 used a different chip set from the PVR 250 and 350 models. As a result I've heard rumors that some 3rd party capture programs did work with this model (they don't work with the 250 and 350) but as I am a 350 owner I have no personal experience with this. WinTV is pretty intuitive to use. Hauppauge has some online docs that might help you, but since you've been a member almost 8 years here and have over 100 posts to your account, I'm thinking you probably can figure it out on your own. However, because this card is old it may not work with Windows 7. Windows 7 does have a compatibility mode and you might need to run this as a Win XP program using that compatibility mode. I can tell you from the 350 model that sometimes when capturing VHS or laserdisc input that you may have to cycle through all the input choices before you find the one it's actually using (ie. it may be using EXT2 and if you only check EXT1 you won't find it). And sometimes getting audio to work with capture cards can be a little tricky and you may have to check your audio settings under Windows 7 and be sure that no inputs are muted.

[jagabo]

Maybe this: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_mce.html

[edDV]

Here is the software support site for the PVR-150.

WinTV6 works for Win7 32 bit but currently not for 64 bit (last I heard).
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_pvr150.html

[TimA-C]

The latest version of the Hauppauge software does work in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, although I think you must have less than 4Gb of RAM for it work with the 64-bit W7. You also need the original CD that came with the card to install the latest version of Hauppauge's software. If your original CD is out of date or lost then you can purchase a disk for I think around £9. All the details are on the Hauppauge site.

As for using it, well, you set the recording parameters (e.g. bitrates etc.) in the Config menu, choose the channel you want to record from (the composite and s-video inputs are treated as channels) click on the Record button and press the Play button on your VHS recorder. It's not that difficult!

In Windows 7 you can tweak the brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc. in the registry although the defaults are much better than they ever were under XP with earlier versions of the software. The registry keys can easily be found on the Hauppauge support site. Don't forget to either reboot the PC or restart the Hauppauge service before the registry tweaks will take effect.

I was getting ready to ditch my PVR150 as it never really lived up to expectations, but I'm starting to use it more than my ageing Liteon DVD recorder for archiving from our Sky+ box.

[LightWeightProducer]

Command line capture tool - http://www.users.on.net/~alfalfa/files/GBRecord92.zip

The latest drivers support Win7 32 and 64 bit. Windows must not have access to RAM in addresses beyond 32 bits otherwise the card will not work reliably. This is entirely due to the way the driver is built. If Hauppauge decided to do it the driver could be rejigged to ensure DMA access was only attempted to RAM below the 32 bit cut off point.

[lordsmurf]

The 150 had that awful audio issue, where it distorted the sound.
(Audio input too loud, would crackle/fizzle when loud.)

[LightWeightProducer]

That was only because of stupid programming of the audio device. With appropriate configuration (turn off AGC, remove limiter, set sane gain levels) its fine.

In general I consider the hardware on the PVR150 to be superior to that which is on the HVR-22xx (digital reception aside). The MPEG encoder on the PVR-150 preserves more high frequency detail than the MPEG encoder on the HVR-22xx does. The HVR-22xx reminds me of a VHS tape.

I can post some images from both card's svideo inputs if anyone is interested.

[lordsmurf]

That Hauppauge 150, 250, and 350 cards made soft MPEG files. It was really bad at 352x480. Side-by-side tests with an ATI All In Wonder card (and even the JVC DVD recorder that some people have complained about) showed the 150-250-350 cards to be somewhat smeary. I have a 150 card here still. It's been a few years since I played with it.

Chroma was sometimes gained against the luma, too, which I never liked, on the 150 cards. Inversely, sometimes the luma threshold was way too high. It was almost random.

[LightWeightProducer]

That comes down to stupid programming of the hardware again, at least for the PVR-150. I can't speak about the 250 and 350. If the configuration is adjusted to something more sensible the PVR-150 picture quality can be, IMO, quite reasonable. Keep in mind that I use the cards s-video input, not composite.

Running the card under linux is a bit of a revelation to Windows users - functional access to the encoders configuration (yes, it does produce 16:9 natively!), supported in > 4Gb RAM, properly control picture filtering, etc. Why Hauppauge set the 150 up so poorly is beyond me. Its like they had a work experience kid in to do it.

This is a quick n dirty grab from with a PVR-150 under linux using the svideo output of a DVD player. It could be improved but I don't intend to eat into my weekend doing so.

[jagabo]

Since the PVR-250/350 days when they were at their peak, Hauppauge hasn't had any software engineers with any idea what they are doing.

[lordsmurf]

I was almost without words at how much of a coding abortion WinTV 7 was. It was ghastly unstable crap, the likes of which I had not seen in many years. Indeed, quality has trailed off something fierce in the last 5 or so years.

I no longer suggest any of their products.

ATI had a slump there for a while, but they redeemed themselves with the 600, 650 and 750 series cards. Although I would still suggest those are downgraded from the classic AGP Radeon cards.

I don't have Linux on a system full-time yet, but I might starting next year. I'd be interested in hearing more about the Linux PVR-150 setup. That sounds interesting. (This type of stuff is why I still visit videohelp.)

[LightWeightProducer]

The card is fairly easy to run under linux. For my own reasons I tend to do it all via the command line rather than through something like mythtv. Under ubuntu it was as easy as installing the ivtv packages and then using v4l2-ctl to set up the card. The actual capture process is as easy as falling off a chair, just cat or cp the card's output to a file.

This wiki gives a fair bit of insight. http://ivtvdriver.org/index.php/Documentation