Average Customer Review: ( 89 customer reviews )
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34 of 35 found the following review helpful:
 Great Tuner Oct 03, 2008
By Max Remley
This is a relatively new product and I was skeptical as to whether it would work for me. There were very few reviews to help guide me. I'm happy to say that the tuner card installed easily, the drivers loaded properly, and both tuners (this is a dual tuner card) are functioning with my digital video recording software. I use Beyond TV and wasn't sure that the current version of BTV would recognize this new tuner device. I had some initial concerns in that the Hauppauge software that came with the tuner card wouldn't pick up one of my local channels (the weakest channel in my area). However, the BTV software successfully directed the tuner card to the weak channel and the tuners pull in a sufficiently strong signal for good reception. I'm delighted with this card and would recommend it. Just make sure you have the appropriate slot open in your computer to accept it. Double check the specs for the card and your computer to ensure compatibility. Oh yeah... you can order directly from Hauppauge for less than what Amazon has it priced at.
17 of 18 found the following review helpful:
Sweet, Totaly recommended. Oct 31, 2008
By P. Morgenroth
"High Voltage"
This thing is pretty sweet. Just connect 1 coax cable and it splits it internaly. I like being able to record 2 shows at once. I watch TV on my big screen, but use this to record my favorite shows and works great, the quality, although not HD over my standard cable connection, is still quite good. My friends brag about having a 100gb Tivo, lol, i have 2Tbs, and can burn em to DVD, hehe. Great card, works perfect on Vista Ultamate 64bit. I use it with Media Center and not the WinTV.
The shipping was super fast and the price is certainly great.
10 of 10 found the following review helpful:
Good hardware, buggy software Mar 04, 2009
By Adela Lee
The hardware works great. The wintv software came with it is buggy though, and I had hard time using its channel auto-search. It found all the analog channels but no HDs. I had to look up the physical frequencies online and "tell" it the numbers. With my help it found all the HD channels but the recording went wrong every 20-30 minutes (it would time shift back 5 minutes once in a while so you get part of the show twice and lost some other parts). And I couldn't get the tv guide to work. After tried all that, I reinstalled my OS to windows 7 beta, boom, worked like a charm. Now It can record two HD channels smoothly at the same time (without the need of an HD converter box -- since it supports QAM I just plug in the cable on the wall). And with media center (builtin in windows 7) I can get all the channels mapped correctly. I have a remote and a IR sensor from an old media center pc (it doesn't have a free PCI-e slot so I cannot simply replace its TV card with this one), so I plugged the sensor to the windows 7 machine. Worked immediately. It saved me a lot of time watching TV because I could use the remote to skip commercials. Can you believe each segment of commercials in a one-hour TV show can be 3 minutes or longer? The real show only runs for about 45 minutes. Overall I'm very happy with the tuner card. The reason for 4 stars is the wintv software.
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
in W7 this card gives 5 tuners and perfect picture with full 5.1 surround sound Mar 08, 2012
By rejuvenationmd
"rejuvenationmd"
I tried SiliconDust HDHomeRun Dual High Definition Digital Television HDHR3-US (Black) but had pixelation problems several times every show on two channels so I decided to try Hauppauge 2250 PCI-E Dual TV Tuner card and I am so delighted. Not only are my pixelation problems history, I also get better picture, FM radio, and analog channels for no additional cost!
This is my setup on Windows 7 64-bit. First let me say that installing the card and setting up the Hauppauge 2250 was the easiest part of my setup. I have TimeWarner cable and am paying $41/month for standard internet (10Mbs download and 1MBs upload) and basic cable. I have a three-way splitter on the cable coming out of the wall. One cable goes directly to the FM radio on this Hauppage 2250 pc card and I receive numerous FM channels which I can access through the radio player in Windows Media Center (WMC).
The second cable runs from the splitter to the TimeWarner modem to my ooma Hub - VoIP Phone Device with No Monthly Phone Service Bills where I get a landline for free then to Netgear WNR2000 for wireless connection of printers, tablets, smartphones, etc and then ethernet out to Gateway DX4350-UR21P Desktop (Black) from where I can couch surf on Logitech Illuminated Ultrathin Keyboard with Backlighting, Logitech Wireless Mouse M505, and Logitech Wireless Touchpad with Multi-Touch Navigation (910-002345) which share one unifying USB receiver so only one USB slot is taken in my pc. I especially like the keyboard which lights up only when my hands come near for easy viewing in a darkened room.
The third cable runs to the TV tuner in this Hauppauge 2250 card. I did not install or use anything else included in the box as the ir cable was too short and I don't need extra inputs. The Hauppauge 2250 card is available on Amazon card only without all the extras Hauppauge 1229 WinTV-HVR-2250 White Box for System Builders Dual Hybrid PCI-E TV Tuner Board but I purchased the 1213 instead of the 1229 thinking I was going to use some of the extras which seemed like a bargain for only $9.40 but I ended up not using any of them.
The Hauppage CSR told me that the tv tuner was a dual tuner and that during installation I would have to decide between whether I wanted digital HD OR analog SD OR antenna. However, using Windows 7 64 bit Windows Media Center, I just followed the prompts letting it automatically install and W7 WMC found 2 digital tuners AND 2 analog tuners and I clicked that is correct and let it search for channels finding both analog SD and digital HD on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, TBS, CW, HSN, and WGN as well as analog only on CNN, TNT, Lifetime, Nikelodeon, USA, MTV, FNC, SPIKE, TWC, AETV, AMC, DSC, BRAVO, MBNBC, CNBC, EP, Food, FX, KUSI, HGTV, TLC, HIST, SyFy, WEP, TCM, Comedy Channel, LMN, Toon, Disn, APLP, TVLAND, BET, and IONSATP. All of the analog channels I was unable to get on the HDHomerun dual tuner as it does not have an analog tuner. While I would prefer HD to SD, I like receiving all these analog SD channels that I did not get on the clear-qamm HD only tuner. Some shows I like are not available anywhere in HD and others are available in a variety of places in HD or SD for various prices. For example, I would not want to live without the Daily Show with Jon Stewart or the Colbert Report which I can watch on HuluPlus in HD for $8/month or on the Comedy Channel website for free or iTunes for $1.99 per episode which comes to about $32/month (tip, buy Apple stock not Apple products)or in SD with this 2250 card for free. So in Windows 7, this one Hauppage 2250 card is viewed in WMC7 as 4 tuner choices but only available to use two at a time with these two hybrid tuners able to free switch around between digital HD, analog SD, and FM radio automatically controlled by WMC7. WMC in Windows Vista was able to control only 2 tuners which may have been with what the CSR was familiar.
I control my WMC with my Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote with Color Touchscreen using the Infrared receiver in the Windows 7 Vista XP Media Center MCE PC Remote Control and Infrared Receiver for Home, Premium and Ultimate Edition with USB 2.0 Extension Cable Type A Male to Type A Female 6 ft, Black to get the receiver on top of my Onkyo HTX-22HDX Ultra-Compact HD Home Theater System (Black) with add-on speaker set making 5.1 surround sound without any tweaking on my Gateway DX4350-UR21P and then HDMI cable out to Samsung 52" HDTV. BTW, the code you need for your Harmony One remote to send signal to the IR receiver to control you W7WMC is Ortek VRC-1100.
It was much more of an ordeal than I anticipated to get this setup. I tried many products and found that all kinds of various electronic issues that were further complicated by no technical support or technical support that did not speak English or was not familiar with their products or was unable to solve their problems or with defective products. I remember the good old days when companies had their products checked out by TWO quality control departments before releasing to the retailer but now the consumer has to figure it out and return defective products within the alloted return timeframe. My FAVORITE technical support was Gateway who said "No Tweaking required, IT JUST WORKS!" So I am watching full 1080p with 5.1surround sound via the Hauppage 2250 tuner card and I am thrilled. My audio and video have never been better even when I was paying $100/month to Times Warner. My PC records faster and searches 1000 faster than the TW box I had to rent for $15/month - Good riddance! If I want to pay for more additional channels such as ShowTime or HBO, I would need to rent a descramble box from TW and place it in the cable from the three-way splitter to the tv tuner in the Hauppage 2250 card. However, I like Amazon Prime Instant Video for movies better as there is more available to watch when you want to watch something and my Amazon streaming experience is better than I ever got from Netflix, Blockbuster, or HuluPlus.
I feel I have optimized getting the best tv entertainment experience for the least cost in my area and for my preferences. I think I am set now for the next year as Times Warner gave a 12-month price guarantee. Apparently 1080p will no longer be the best video quality out there when 4K is released this 3Q12 being 8 times better they say but it will be awhile before broadcasts, discs, and other video sources get up to that quality.
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8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Good board with bad connectors Mar 05, 2009
By M. Morell
"Marvin"
Although the tuners worked with Vista Media Center as advertised, there was a problem with the coax connectors. One of the connectors became partially disconnected from the board and I had to resolder it to ensure a good electrical and physical connection. As an owner of other Hauppauge boards, I was very surprised.
Because of this problem, I recommend using slip-on coax cables with this board as opposed to the normal screw-on type. Even hand-tightening is not gentle enough for this board.
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