WinTV 150 Vs. 250

[Jack&Water]

I don't see much of a difference on the Haupage Comparison Page. Can anyone enlighten me?

[Baldrick]

check http://www.shspvr.com/reviews/comparison/comparison.htm also

[FulciLives]

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 is newer than the 250 model.

However that does not make it better.

The 150 model has several "issues" in regards to quality that the 250 model is devoid of ... in other words ... get the 250 as it is not "buggy" like the 150.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[rumplestiltskin]

The 150 uses one chip to do it all whereas the 250 uses two. I bought a 150 and returned it after it was determined that the audio volume could not be controlled and it was always distorted. The 250 had no such problem.

[Jack&Water]

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 is newer than the 250 model.

However that does not make it better.

The 150 model has several "issues" in regards to quality that the 250 model is devoid of ... in other words ... get the 250 as it is not "buggy" like the 150.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

The 150 came bundled with my computer so I'm afraid it's too late. I was asking about the 250 to see if it was worth upgrading. Could you please elaborate on the 150's bugs?

Thanks for the other replies, guys.

[rumplestiltskin]

Audio was distorted (way too loud). No amount of futzing with the registry could resolve it. If you do not have this problem, then don't fix it.

[jagabo]

There was also an issue where the white levels were way too high. That seems to have been limited to the PAL version.

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1369073#1369073

[rumplestiltskin]

I sold my PVR250 when I re-purposed my PC (and then sold the PC when my Intel iMac arrived; no need for the extra box). Up until then, it worked great. I would have kept it if it could have done hardware MPEG4 or, preferably, H264.

I'll probably get the Miglia TV Micro or something else in the next few months.

[The_Doman]

The PVR250 would be the indeed the better product...
I have 3 PVR150's myself, they CAN produce good results but still too many issues...
(The ongoing audio issue WAS fixed with the newer drivers of begin 2006)

Some updated info here:
Hauppauge 150, good or bad?

[Jack&Water]

Thanks for all of the info, guys.

[karelj]

I am using a PVR 150 with Dscaler and the results are great.
I have Hi def service and a hi def capable DVR. The card is connected to the DVR via svideo and I am capturing in AVI(HuffyUV), converting to mpeg2 then burning to DVD.
The quality is much better than even a 15000kbps capture in the cards default mpeg2 format.

[videomaniac]

I am using a PVR 150 with Dscaler and the results are great.
I have Hi def service and a hi def capable DVR. The card is connected to the DVR via svideo and I am capturing in AVI(HuffyUV), converting to mpeg2 then burning to DVD.
The quality is much better than even a 15000kbps capture in the cards default mpeg2 format.

You are using your PVR150 to capture in avi???????? what are you using to convert to mpeg?
Seems like the long way around and a waste of money on the PVR150.

[karelj]

How is it a waste of money????
It is extra added time to convert to mpeg2 but the quality is superior.
I want the best quality because I intend to make my own dvds of series such as '24', 'Sopranos' or whatever else I enjoy.
I use TMPEnc to convert.

[FulciLives]

I use TMPEnc to convert.

You can save yourself a lot of time if you were to use CCE (Cinema Craft Encoder) instead of TMPGEnc for your MPEG-2 DVD spec encoder.

Not that there is anything wrong with TMPGEnc but CCE is much faster and if you want to nitpick ... CCE doesn't use the RGB colorspace that TMPGEnc does ... a big plus for using CCE in the eyes of many people.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[bits]

How is it a waste of money????
It is extra added time to convert to mpeg2 but the quality is superior.
I want the best quality because I intend to make my own dvds of series such as '24', 'Sopranos' or whatever else I enjoy.
I use TMPEnc to convert.

It sounds like you are actually recording to mpeg then to avi then back to mpeg.

Are you actually using the onboard hardware of the PVR150 to capture and encode to avi? Or are you using the PVR to cap to a high bitrate mpeg and then using software to encode to a loss less avi?

If you are doing the latter I doubt there is much of a quality difference as compared to having cap'd to 8MB CBR using the 150.

[Jack&Water]

He's capturing to AVI using Huffy compression with Dscaler via the PVR 150's S-video input. I might be doing the same if I didn't have a basic analog cable signal.

[Jack&Water]

I use TMPEnc to convert.

You can save yourself a lot of time if you were to use CCE (Cinema Craft Encoder) instead of TMPGEnc for your MPEG-2 DVD spec encoder.

Not that there is anything wrong with TMPGEnc but CCE is much faster and if you want to nitpick ... CCE doesn't use the RGB colorspace that TMPGEnc does ... a big plus for using CCE in the eyes of many people.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

What kind of results are you getting with CCE? I can do a 90 minute film with 2-pass VBR in TMPGEnc in under 2 hours. How fast would you say CCE can do the same?

[FulciLives]

I use TMPEnc to convert.

You can save yourself a lot of time if you were to use CCE (Cinema Craft Encoder) instead of TMPGEnc for your MPEG-2 DVD spec encoder.

Not that there is anything wrong with TMPGEnc but CCE is much faster and if you want to nitpick ... CCE doesn't use the RGB colorspace that TMPGEnc does ... a big plus for using CCE in the eyes of many people.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

What kind of results are you getting with CCE? I can do a 90 minute film with 2-pass VBR in TMPGEnc in under 2 hours. How fast would you say CCE can do the same?

Hard question to answer since it depends a lot on the speed of the computer and a bunch of other things.

Let's put it this way ... with the same source and with the "same" settings in each encoder ... CCE will always beat TMPGEnc speed wise.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[jagabo]

When I played around with the CCE free trial I found it was 2 to 3 times faster than TMPGEnc Plus. But it didn't seem to have a single pass constant quality mode -- what I usually use in TMPGEnc.