Last day sale on the PVR-250

[Anonymous65]

Today is the last day to get the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 for $99 ($50 mail-in rebate) at CompUSA. This is a GREAT deal for the best hardware mpeg capture card you can get today!

[bbb]

skittelsen,

I just picked up the card. I heard you had extensive problems at first. How did you get your card functioning?

I installed the drivers. My Computer's Device Manager shows the card installed -- WinPVR II Encoder. WinTV DirectDraw Inspection is fine.

**However, Hauppauge WinTV System Inspection says:
WARNING! We have not been able to detect the presence of the Hauppauge WinTV card.
Make sure the WinCast (or WinTVpci) hardware is properly installed in a PCI slot.

When I open WinTV2000 and I see no video signal. I add a channel with the composite setting. I still see no video signal. Then, I see a grey horizontal lined screen. But the channel buttons became very laggy, very unresponsive. Once, I heard audio from my VCR but it was too sped up (sounds were chirpy like Chipmunks). Still I never saw video. I reinstalled the drivers. I also installed the beta drivers. Still no video.

[Anonymous65]

I assume you did not do a schannel scan? Even if you're not going to connect a TV antenna or cable to the card, you have to do a scannel scan with a signal connected to the antenna input. As soon as it detects a signal, it's happy and you can add the composite input as channel 210. From this point on, you can disconnect the cable and use the card with only a composite input signal. I agree with you, installing the card is way to difficult, it should be a lot easier.

http://steve.kittelsen.com/pvr250

And the detection file you found in the CD-ROM, is not for the PVR-250, but the other PCI BT8x8 WinTV cards.

[bbb]

The channel scan works kinda. It froze when it finished scanning through my antenna channels. I forced quit the application (said "not responding"). I tried the scan again--this time stopping the scan after just a few channels. I finally saw video and heard normal audio.

But, when I closed the TV application and restarted the application, I couldn't get any channels working. It would only freeze at a picture frame from the video on whatever channel I selected. I have to force quit and open a channel manually (right click and select a channel). It keeps freezing on a frame on the video from the channel. If I click on the channel up or down button, I never even see a frame of video--just freezes on black.

Is WinTV32 for Windows98? Is WinTV2000 for Windows2000/XP?

In any case, both applications freeze. WindowsTV2000 is a little bit worse--more laggy irresponsive.

[sterno]

Is WinTV32 for Windows98? Is WinTV2000 for Windows2000/XP?

When I used an older WinTV PCI card in Windows 95 both applications worked. When I used it in Windows 2000 both worked. I've never used the card in Windows 98 or XP, but I imagine they'd be the same.

On both systems I used WinTV32 exclusively just because I thought the interface for WinTV 2000 was obnoxious. I'm not sure that there is any difference between them beyond the appearance.

[kitty]

Use the latest drivers & application patches - see www.shspvr.com
Also try another PCI slot.

Microcenter also has this on sale - Since I've had mine a month I feel I got stiffed $50. I still like the card alot though.

Skittlesen - any luck convincing them to change the buttons on Win2000? Something more intuitive or even bigger? Also the animation for the recording box dropping down is waytoo slow when you want to record right NOW.

[Anonymous65]

Also, if you have problems with the driver on the CD-ROM, download the updated driver from Hauppauge. The original driver on the CD-ROM is very slow and causes system freezes. So, download the driver and the mpeg decoder. There should be no need to download a newer version of WinTV2000.

Also, I have never heard of any crashing during a channel scan before. Do you have any IRQ conflicts or sharing of the IRQ?

[Anonymous65]

Yeah, I agree about the WinTV2000 skin, it needs to be updated. They have used this skin forever now, and it's time for a face lift

[bbb]

I did download the latest beta drivers from Hauppauge before I installed the card. I tried the beta drivers first then I added the apps. No good. I installed the original drivers. No good. Then I uninstalled everything and just used the original drivers. Still no good. I added the beta drivers over the original drivers--Still no good. Then I installed Via4in1 (latest), IDE Driver, DirectX8.1, and still no good. I reset my PCI devices in Bios with PNP off. Still no good.

However, I see zero problems in my Device Manager--it recognizes the card perfectly and says no conflicts anywhere on any device. I never encountered any errors during installing any of the drivers. Very strange--seems like hardware is fine but software/apps are messed up. I never could get the channels working again--just the first time.

My newly built system was very very stable (1 crash in 2 weeks) until I installed the Hauppauge card (crash/system-stall 1 in every 3 bootups).

Regarding the physical card itself, what I noticed was ... that the static wrapper on my Hauppauge was resealed. A sticker underneath was ripped open and someone resealed it with a new sticker on top of the old one. Did I get a refurbished/returned card? The card looked new. It was shrink wrapped but all companies can re-shrinkwrap.

I'm thinking about returning this headache card and use the money to buy a more modern Geforce3 AGP card with TV Out--I'm still using a PCI Voodoo 3 on my new machine. For now, I will have to rely on my trusty Pinnacle DC10+ capture card--still needs slow external MPEG encoders but very reliable.

Are Hauppauge software/drivers always so buggy?

Hauppauge=Crappauge.

[Anonymous65]

Sounds like a combination of hardware and software that will never work together, like my Pioneer 104 and Windows 98/Me...

[SHS]

BBB
What OS are you using and what Voodoo drivers you using?
What input are you using.
Did you hook up audio input to the PVR 250 this must hook up when using the S-Video/Composite you well not see anything if not hook up.
Are all your device on one IRQ under Win2K/XP?.
Click on record button to see anything show in the recording.
Try change the Overlay to Primary "Start | Programs | Hauppauge WinTV click on Primary".
Do you have this Nimo Codec pack install if so uninstall it.

I secen computer store put a new sticker on the static bag wrapper and re-shrinkwrap when could have been a bad card to start with because they where to lazy check it to in sure that it was on work and they should have mark as a PerOpenBox.
Fry's, BestBuy, CompUSA all have a bad h of doing this.
Far as know Hauppauge dosen't refurbished they product.

Also can you give me full run on your system.

[bbb]

BBB
What OS are you using and what Voodoo drivers you using?
What input are you using.
Did you hook up audio input to the PVR 250 this must hook up when using the S-Video/Composite you well not see anything if not hook up.
Are all your device on one IRQ under Win2K/XP?.
Click on record button to see anything show in the recording.
Try change the Overlay to Primary "Start | Programs | Hauppauge WinTV click on Primary".
Do you have this Nimo Codec pack install if so uninstall it.
Also can you give me full run on your system.

I'm using Windows 98SE - with latest Windows Updates, latest official Voodoo drivers (DirectX 8.0 compatible). I input video and audio to the PVR250.

When I push record on a black screen (channel 99-my composite setting channel), it says "Intitializing ... Stream Error ... A Stream operation failed. Hit Okay to continue. Some errors may require restarting the application."

**Strange surprise: I just disabled the card and rebooted. Then I enabled it. Now WinTV2000 works! But switching channels is very laggy (2-3 seconds delay). I push pause and the video starts to stutter. I push pause again. Video gets better but is still a little stuttery. I change channels again but it won't change channels--channel can be viewed. I close WinTV2000 and reopen it. Now, it freezes again. I can't get WinTV2000 to lock on to a running video again. It just freezes when I select a channel--white screen.

Why do the channel buttons lag so much when it works. Why doesn't it pause live TV? Why does it stop working when I close WinTV2000/WinTV32? Why do I have to disable the card, reboot, and enable it when my Device Manager says no conflicts and sees the card?!

[SHS]

Ok you should find with Windows 98SE and with latest official Voodoo drivers not thoses heck up one I never did any for Win9x OS I did see any point in it went they work just find how ever this was diff story with Win2K/XP.
Yes you should have 1-3 seconds delay when switching channels becuase this card do REALtime MPEG Preview.

Do you have
WinTV-PVR 250 Drivers 1.2.20203 (This can only be download off my web site)
WinTV32/2000 3.41.20197 (This can only be download off my web site)
WinTV-PVR MPEG Software Decoder 2.0.20108

Goto WinTV Folder in Program Files copy the hcwclear.exe to a temp folder
Unistall ever thing from Add-Remove Programs look for Hauppauge ??? start uninstall all them also look for InterVideo Fillter SDK after this is done run hcwclear.exe then reboot after rebooting caenl HardWizard re-run hcwclear.exe.

Start by install from the CD first then upgrade to the file above.

Any what is you system spec

[leebo]

Going back to the original topic, does anyone know what was on sale at Frys two weeks ago?

Geeze. I've been waiting for the 350 to ship, but would have picked up a 250 had I known it was going for $99! I looked through the CompUSA ad last week but didn't see anything about this card.

Skittleson, what part of the country do you live in? Is it possible Comps ad's are region specific?

[SHS]

Yes leebo that only good if you live in USA.

[Anonymous65]

Use the web for shopping and checking prices at CompUSA. It's a national sale (was) at www.compusa.com You have to download and print the mail-in rebate forms. CompUSA makes that process quite painless.

FYI, I'm located in Rochester, NY.

[matt-o]

Just a FYI..
I Just picked one up. As it others have mentioned it was a bit of a hassle to get to install.. It all sounds familiar...
I just want to add that for anyone else who might try this card in a intel 810/815 mobo with integrated graphics...
the card just displays a black screen....Until you change your res to 800x600 @ 24 bit.
then it works fine..
changing channels IS SLOW..

[leebo]

"changing channels IS SLOW.. "

Sounds like it's playing from a recorded portion of the file EVEN when you're watching live TV.

An ATI capture/display card and MMC don't do this, so changing channels is fast.

But their PVR is crap, IMHO.
I can live with a two or three second pause in changing channels vs. crappy video quality.

[Anonymous65]

With the newer drivers, the channel changing should not take more than a second, at least it does so for me. But, with the original drivers from the CD-ROM, everyhting is slow, changing channel, start record, stop record, change profile and so on.

[SHS]

matt-o you want know why that is well I tell you why you don't have eough video memory two thing you can do add more system memory and bump up video memory to 32mb in the bios.
On-Chip Video Windows Size 32MB
AGP Graphis Aperture Size 32MB
If you system has 384 or more bump both them up to 64MB

[bbb]

Alright, I should have done my homework before this purchase ... would have saved me a trip to return the card.

Reading the reviews on the PVR250 on this site, it seems that it really bites in terms of the drivers ... I mean really bad ... buggy ... insanely frustrating drivers.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCardRead=Hauppauge%20WinTV%20PVR-250&Search=Search

I wouldn't want to put anyone through this torture.

[leebo]

Kitty said:

"Microcenter also has this on sale"

Well, I guess this one's over too. It shows a price of $149.

[matt-o]

SHS thanks I'll give that a try..
But the odd thing is that when I tried it at 800x600 16 bit it did not work... how ever 24 bit did...
Now that I have the card working I can say that It was worth the trouble IF you primarily want the card for capturing, The quality is Excellent! I have yet to burn anything to DVD to test on the TV but if past experience is anything, Captures that look this good on the PC should look great on the TV..
Most importantly rock solid audio/video sync So Far!

Keeping my fingers crossed

[SHS]

Well matt-o if you want have some real fun like Spike did hehe pick up a real video card to do the job nVidia or ATI.
Yes that onboard Video on the motherboard is not diff then on found on old Intel i740 which did poor job with overlay 16bit color so I'm not supize at all by that.
bit-tech Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 Review

[davy19]

I was thinking of picking one up even though I missed the sale.

Once you get past the install, how fast is it to copy a 2 hour vhs tape to vcd?

I tried doing it with using avi's with my win tv go, and the whole process with encoding took 6-8 hours, it will take me forever to archive my 300 tapes.

[SHS]

davy19 this REALtime mpeg encoding so if your tape are 2 hours long it take you two to record them and how ever long it take you to burn it which can be 4min to 45min depend on speed of your CDR/RW drive that if you do no editing to the clips.

[bbb]

It's real time encoding--so I hear. (returned mine)

That's IF you can get past the black hole of installation problems.

[leebo]

Even the 18 Bronzemen barrier fell eventually.

[bbb]

What's the 18 Bronzemen got to do with this discussion. Wierdo.

[leebo]

Huh?