The Hauppage WinTV-PVR USB2-The Easiest Way Yet to Make Your PC a Personal Video Recorder
Written: Jun 05 '05 (Updated Jun 30 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Stable, free Electronic Program Guide, excellent hardware encoder, remote, records TV & from other sources
Cons: No IR blaster for controlling your cable/satellite tuner box
The Bottom Line: The best option for those who want to watch and record TV on a notebook or low end desktop that doesn’t have the horsepower to encode on the fly.
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| nc10's Full Review: KWorld PVR-TV 305U USB2.0 TV Tuner (KW-PVR-TV305U) |
The Hauppage WinTV-PVR-USB2 is a hardware based external personal video recorder/TV Tuner/Video capture box for Windows PC desktops and laptops. The WinTV offers are nice package of features in an external USB2 connected box that works surprising well. The hardware encoder completely meets expectations, providing a reasonably wide range of encoding options with good quality, while requiring very little of your systems resources. The WinTV software doesn’t offer quite as many features as 3rd party PVR software like BeyondTV3 or Sage TV, but neither is it a “lite”: product with a reduced feature set. It offers a lot of features, and is as good or better than the software supplied with other tuner cards, including ATI, Avermedia, and Pinnacle Systems. WinTV2000 is one of the most stable PVR software programs that I’ve ever used. With the WinTV PVR USB2, you can do the following on your PC
- Watch TV in a window or full screen on your PC, or any screen attached to your PC
- Pause, rewind or fast forward while watching
- Encode and record shows to your hard drive, using the Hardware MGEG Encoder, without taxing your cpu
- Listen and record FM radio
- Capture still images from your video signal
- Edit the recordings using the included “lite” version of Ulead’s DVD Movie Factory and burn to CD/DVD
- Schedule recordings of any show with one click using the free TitanTV electronic program guide.
- Capture and encode video “on the fly” from other video sources, VHS players, video camera, etc.
- IR remote
- Record/view/listen to/from devices connected via coax cable, composite video, L/R audio RCA audio jacks, S video and FM antenna inputs
One PC in our home has become a dedicated personal video recorder for our family, and we often wished we were able to record two shows at the same time, or at least watch one and record another. That wasn’t possible with the existing TV tuner in that PC, an ATI TV Wonder VE, and PVR software (Beyond TV3), which together required 50-75% of the system’s resources whenever a show was being recorded. We recently upgraded this system to include two TV tuners with separate hardware encoders, to allow us to record two shows at once. Beyond TV3 and its associated electronic program guide is being used to control both tuners (quite well). Beyond TV can only be used to control two tuners is if both use hardware encoders, that is, the video encoding is done by a chip on the TV tuner rather than your PC, which would be overwhelmed by recording and encoding TV shows from two tuners at once. I installed a WinTV PVR 150 hardware based encoder/tuner inside the PC, and connected a second tuner, the WinTV PVR USB2 to the same PC. Both worked well together with Beyond TV3, though I’ll mostly discuss the WinTV 2000 PVR software that’s included with this hardware.
Installation and setup
In the box was the External Tuner/Hardware MGEG Encoder itself (about 6" X 6" X 1"), IR remote w/ 2 AAA batteries, power cord, 3’ USB cable, FM antenna, software CD, 22 page manual, and optional mounting stand. Unlike most USB connected items I’ve installed recently, the instructions suggested I power up the device first, connect it to my PC, and then let Windows install the software automatically. (Most installations I’ve followed recently suggested that I install the software first.)
After attaching my cable TV cable, a USB cable, and power cable to the box, I connected the USB cable to my PC. Windows then installed the software drivers from the CD. This didn’t work at first, something running on my PC, either Symantec Internet Security or Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta, kept one of the dll files from installing. With a System Restore, I set my PC to a point back before the first installation attempt, and reinstalled the drivers, this time successfully, with both background security programs disabled. Then I installed the applications from the cd, which included..
- the WinTV TV and FM viewing/listening/recording applications
- Ulead DVD Movie Factory 3 SE
- The scheduler, which runs in the background to launch scheduled recordings
- software for the IR remote
- the nanoPEG software for trimming and combining mpg files
The first time the WinTV application is launched, it will run a scan to check which channels are being received by the WinTV USB2. Once that was done, I was able to start watching TV shows on my PC.
Watching TV
Launched the WinTV2000 application is accomplished by double clicking the icon on the desktop, or pushing the “on” button on the remote. TV viewing works extremely well. I didn’t expect much from the PVR software, but after using it for a while, I’ve grown to like it. Right clicking on the TV window toggles between two views, one with the TV window surrounded by the controls (channel, volume, preference menu's, etc), the other with just the viewing window with no controls displayed. While you are viewing, there are a lot of options available from the WinTV 2000 application including
- Volume or channel adjustment (software or the remote)
- Snap stills of the viewing screen at resolutions up to 1600 X 1200
- “one touch record”
- pause, skip back 10 seconds skip forward 10 seconds,
- toggle between a small window and full screen, small window can be “always on top” and resized to any area
- previous channel, channel “preview”, which shows a screen shot from each channel, 16 at a time. Clicking on one of these takes you to that channel.
Once you’ve used the WinTV applications a couple of times, you’ll find the controls intuitive. A lot of useful right click menus are enabled, for example, right clicking on the channel number display brings up a comlete list of all channels, from which you can quickly choose another channel to switch to. Even though the the WinTV USB tuner is capturing the video stream and encoding it to mpeg “on the fly” the picture you view on your screen seems as good as you’d get with a standard TV tuner without encoder (I think the picture is as good is as good as what I get with my ATI AIW (all in wonder) 9800 card on another PC in our home. When I am watching TV in time shift mode on my AIW card, it requires almost 50% of my system’s resources, limiting what else I can do with my PC while I watch TV. If I’m using the Beyond TV3 PVR software, its even worse, about 75% of my systems’ resources are used. With the WinTV PVR USB 2, only 16-19% are used, because all of the encoding chores are being handled by the PVR box rather than my PC.
Scheduling Recordings
In addition to the “One Touch Record Button” mentioned earlier, the WinTV PVR offers two scheduling options. One is the WinTV Scheduler , where you can enter the channel and time for the show you want to record. You can also set the Scheduler to record this channel/time period combination only once, or once a week, every day, or on selected days. The Scheduler can be set to record from the FM tuner or the TV tuner. But what really makes this setup sing is the web based Titan TV Electronic Program Guide (EPG), a web page that provides hour by hour channel listings for every channel you can receive. Titan TV is a complete program guide for for any area of the US, and they describe their service as follows:TitanTV.com is the leading online program guide designed to help consumers find out what's on TV at their specific address; including digital, analog, cable and satellite programming-and highly regarded for its accuracy with HD listings. It is the only guide connected to broadcasters for real-time programming updates, and membership is free! ……TitanTV offers….household address specific programming, including all sources of programming (off-air, cable, satellite), high def. identification, PVR capabilities, and sort/filter/search tools
Without the marketing-speak, this means the TitanTV EPG not only displays listings, but also allows you to search for shows (ie, if I enter "ROCKFORD FILES" into the search box, the listing shows that the show airs on the Chicago station WGN twice each day over the next couple of weeks). Rolling the mouse over any individual listing brings up a menu, offering more information on the show, or an option to add the show to the WinTV Scheduler with just one click, which loads the start and end times and channel into the scheduler. This works reliably and is very easy to use. It does some advanced options, you can't tell it to record all new episodes of a show, for example.
Recording Quality
WintTV 2000 offeres a wide range of MPG recording quality settings from a MPEG 1 VCD (video CD) setting requiring about 0.65 gb diskspace per hour of video to a 12mbit/second MPEG2 setting requiring almost 6gb of disk space per hour of video. If you are using a USB1 connection, you'll find its only fast enough to support the lowest quality setting, both for recording shows and for watching shows in "pause" mode. Most users will want to add a USB2 port if they don't have one, to take full advantage of this device.
Since I’m recording a TV signal from an average quality analog cable connection, it doesn’t do me much good to record at the highest setting, the source material just isn’t good enough. The mid point settings requiring about 2mb of disk space per hour of recording work best for me, the video looks good when played back full screen on a 19” LCD monitor. The lowest VCD setting is not good enough for full screen playback, but anything better than that is. Even the SVCD setting, requiring less than 1mb of space per hour is pretty good. The encoding isn’t as efficient as the latest DivX encoders or Window Media Video, but it is as good as the software encoder included with my ATI All in Wonder TV tuner card. Recording TV shows does require a lot of disk space, we use a single 120mb hard drive for storing TV shows, and wish we had more storage space.
Remote
The WinTV-PVR USB2 includes a standard remote control, which would be quite useful if your PC was connected to a full size TV screen and you wanted to be able to change channels and adjust volume without setting within reach of a keyboard or mouse. The 43 button remote (a few buttons aren’t used) can be used pretty much like any other other full featured remote control, plus more, you can change channels and volume incrementally, pause, mute, switch between full screen and window mode, switch between open applications, and launch the WinTV 2000 or WinTV FM tuner applications. Since there are a few undefined buttons, I expected to find software to allow me to “program” these buttons, but so far, I’ve not found it, either on the included software cd or on the internet. The Hauppage remote is supported by other applications, including Snapstream’s Beyond TV3 PVR software.
Other Comments
Though I’ve not used this much to capture and video from other devices, it does handle that quite well. I tested recording video from a VHS tape in a VCR, and was able to record near VHS quality video from good quality recordings, with no loss in A/V sync (losing audio video synchronization is a problem encountered with many low end video capture tools). Scheduled recordings from the FM tuner also works, though again, I rarely use that feature.
I’ve had a few problems with stuttering video if I have a lot of other applications on my PC. Sometimes when I’m watching TV with a lot of other applications open, and I try to do something file intensive, opening Outlook or moving a video file over a network connection, the video stutters for a few seconds and then recovers.
The included software for editing your video’s is adequate. The nanoPEG editor for trimming your video clips provides a pretty straightforward option for taking out commercials, or combining clips. Neither it nor the Ulead Movie Factory software are full versions, but they cover the basics.
I only subscribe to basic analog cable TV, which offers about 60 channels in my area. With analog cable, I can use the WinTV’s tuner to switch channels. With most premium services, you’ll need an external box to change channels. Some of Hauppage’s internal TV tuner cards, like the PVR 150, include an “IR Blaster” than can be used to change channels on your TV service provider’s box just like you do with a remote control. The WinTV PVR USB2 does not include an IR Blaster. The WinTV PVR USB2 is a very good option for those who want to watch and record TV shows on a notebook PC, or a low end desktop that just doesn’t have the horsepower to encode on the fly. It’s also a good choice if you’re not comfortable opening your PC, or if you need to conserve expansion slots.
Useful Links
Hauppage: http://www.hauppage.com
SHS PVR forums http://www.shspvr.com/
Recommended:
Yes
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