I think that is weird, because the laptop came with a HD TV tuner (the reason I bought the Hauppauge tuner is that my laptop's tuner is an ExpressCard, and the Hauppauge tuner is USB, so I can use it in both my laptop and my desktop PC). However, the laptop has the same image problem with some HD channels. I've also tried it on my lapotp, which has an Intel dual-core Centrino 2.0ghz - that should be fast enough, since I just bought the laptop 3 weeks ago, and it meets the minimum requirements on the product box.
#Hauppauge wintv hvr 1950 Pc#
My desktop PC has an Athlon 64 3200+, which I think should be good enough. The product box says the minimum processor is a 2.2ghz P4 or 1.8ghz Centrino or equivalent. I don't know what happened to the other external HD.As I mentioned in my original post, some HD channels look okay. (BTW, the hard drive manufacturers all seem to go up and down over the years quality-wise - IBM hard drives used to be the best money could buy until the era of the Deathstar, Seagate drives were king for a while and WD was "meh" for a few years, but now Seagate's going downhill and WD's doing well reliability-wise.) Seagate has apparently been having some quality control problems the past year or so and WD seems to be on top at the moment. Western Digital seems like a good bet these days in terms of external HDs. For example, my fileserver is headless and feeds either my desktop in the "office" or a desktop in the living room that serves as a home theater PC. The recording box can typically stream to other PCs. If you want to record encrypted channels (anything on digital cable other than broadcast network TV typically), you only have two options:ġ) Record in SD with an analog tuner connected to your cable box's composite or S-video outputsĢ) Record in HD with the Hauppauge HD-PVR 1212 connected to your cable box's component outputs BTW, QAM tuners can only tune unencrypter "Clear QAM" channels. In my case the cable modem was installed in my "office" where my PCs are, so I hooked up the tuners there. It's connected to my internal LAN, which does have Internet access through my wireless router, but just like all LANs behind routers, isn't externally accessible unless you make it so. Well, as I said, I'm using a Silicon Dust HDHomeRun, not an HV-1950.
If the machine is not doing playback, even the most basic desktop will be more than enough for recording if a hardware MPEG encoder is used for analog signals. Note that it will get annoying very quickly to have to make sure your laptop is connected to the antenna when your favorite shows are on - you may want to consider buying a dirt-cheap desktop to handle the recording functions. Since you'll only be able to tune TV when connected to a cable or antenna feed, I would suggest that if you get an external hard drive for TV recordings you use a 3.5" drive, since you'll get on average twice the space for the same price as a 2.5" external HD, and you don't need the portability. If I recall correctly, analog recordings were 3-5 GB/hour depending on quality settings, digital recordings typically 5-8 GB/hour depending on the broadcaster. I've dedicated 300GB of storage on my fileserver to recordings, and now that CBS has finally gone HD in my area I'm probably going to be bumping that up soon. You're definately going to want LOTS of hard drive space. With the exception of the Hauppauge HD-PVR 1212, all HD recording solutions directly record the MPEG transport stream sent by the cable system or broadcaster - so the quality of your recordings is exactly what came in from the antenna or cable jack. (I currently have an HDHomeRun for digital and a Hauppauge PVR-500 for analog, so I can record up to two digital and two analog programs simultaneously.)
#Hauppauge wintv hvr 1950 720p#
I think I saw somewhere that ATSC does support a 1080p mode but no one uses it - all broadcasters are 720p or 1080i, same for cable systems.Īlso, for digital-only recording, you might want to investigate the HDHomeRun - it's an external Ethernet-based TV tuner. It's 1080i because that's what the source content is.
That will be the next laptop accessory I get. It can record TV so I can burn it, it is 1080i (I would prefer 1080p but that's fine) and it plugs into a USB port. I looked at the WinTV-HVR-1950 model 1192 and it is perfect.