Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 NSTC/ATSC/QAM Internal HDTV Card PCI-E x1 - OEM

Pros: Very reliable. Clear signal. Gets the job done. Windows Media Center works great with these cards. One thing to note is that Windows Media Center runs far better in a HTPC with a SSD boot drive and large SATA drives for media storage. Also 8GB or 16GB DDR3 or even DDR2 installed on the machine is good. On our machines, Windows Media Center comes up and is ready to go in 3 to 5 seconds. This is great technology!

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: We have 5 different Hauppauge HDTV tuners. 1 USB and 4 PCI-e cards. What we found is that the cheaper models of Hauppauge cards work just as good as the most expensive cards. So you may wish to get the cheaper models if the only thing that you're doing is recording HDTV shows like using a DVR. We have never had technical difficulties with Hauppauge cards, unlike cards from other vendors. Drivers load up automatically and they are ready to go!

Pros: Nothing

Cons: everything. Would not work.

Pros: Works to provide good, clear pictures. Recording same as live TV- very good.

Cons: This model 1187, the one without the remote, doesn't work with Comcast. You need the 1196 with the remote.

Other Thoughts: First of all, please understand that I am NOT blaming Newegg for my situation. Newegg was GREAT! I have Comcast Cable. It is scrambled and you need to get a set top box to provide digital channels to the TV (at $10/month without DVR) or analog reception to your TV (a converter that Comcast provides for free). I just put a Hauppauge HVR-1250 model 1187 (the one without the remote) in my computer. I tried feeding it via the Comcast analog converter box but it didn't work. Hauppauge tech told me to connect the cable line directly to the HVR-1250 card. Yes, I got channels, but only about 15, not the over 80 I should get. According to Hauppauge tech, I should have bought the HVR-1250 model 1196 which comes with a remote tuner. I said What Do I Need a Remote Tuner for When I Will be Tuning My TV Via the Comcast Converter Box? He said it comes with additional software called Win 7 which I need- and then he tried to SELL it to me. HUH? I told him that nowhere in the 1187 description say it is any different from the 1196 except for the remote. Apparently there is no way around this. Buyer beware.

Pros: Installs without using the media from Hauppage. Works with the Windows Media Center on Windows 7.

Cons: Had to run windows update to get the latest driver to fix jitter problem with Windows Media Center

Other Thoughts: I had the jitter problems that were mentioned in a previous review on newegg.com. I happen to run Windows Update and noticed Microsoft had an updated driver for the tuner card. Installed the update, rebooted, and Media Center has no more jitters!!!!

I wish I had seen the packaged 1250 with remote before I ordered this. Too lazy to do a return for the other one.

Pros: I spent some time researching this card so I thought I would post my findings. The driver is cx23885. The ATSC tuner works out of the box with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (which has kernel 3.2.0 by default), but the analog capture does not work. Linux kernel 3.5.5 and above support the cx23885 drivers for DVB digital capture and analog composite/s-video capture. I installed kernel 3.5.5 for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and I could use both ATSC HDTV capture from my OTA antenna and composite analog capture from my cable receiver box.

Cons: If you install kernel 3.5.5 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, use at you own risk.

Other Thoughts: I use Mplayer to capture a TS stream from my OTA antenna. I use Mencoder to encode the TS stream to Mpeg2 and also to encode the analog stream via the composite input. I write my own custom scripts to run the commands, I do not use 3rd party software like MythTV. The composite input is input=0 and the s-video input is input=1, using mencoder. In the /dev folder the digital driver will show as /dev/dvb and the analog driver will show as /dev/video0.

Pros: Great reception, had no problem pulling down local over the air HD channels with a Rosewill Omni antenna

Cons: None so far, working like a champ.

Other Thoughts: I bought three of these to use in a MythTV backend, Arch linux installation (2012-05) detected them right away. One card shows up as two input devices in MythTV so you can record one channel while watching another live.

Pros: Works out of the box (with the usual configuration of course) with Mythbuntu 12.04 64-bit. It came with the low profile bracket which isn't really of use to me (yet), but is nice to have in case of an eventual upgrade.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I bought this card as a second tuner for an existing Mythbuntu frontend/backend set up. It is currently being used with an ATSC over the air set-up to free myself of cable bills. This card pays for itself in less than a month with the money saved.

Pros: When it works, great picture

Cons: Have had the HVR-1250 for 9 months. The software for the board has a conflict with Windows 7 – 64 bit OS. The picture without warning will freeze with a jitter. CPU will go to 100% causing the computer to crash. (blue screen) Have spent hours with Hauppauge tech support trying to resolve the problem without any results, to the point that tech support no longer will answer my emails. Not a happy camper.

Other Thoughts: Save your money, don't buy this board.

Pros: I had this board before in a computer that ran windows 7 and it worked great. Records great, picture clear, did everything I wanted it to. But you MUST buy a wintv 7 disk to use their software, other wise you are stuck with media center. I had that disk, but all was lost in a tornado recently. New egg shipped this very fast and they are fabulous.

Cons: I bought this board the second time around and installed into my new computer. You cant go to the website to try to download the Wintv 7 program, but it wants you to have the original CD in the drive. Somehow, it cannot "find" the disk, which would force you to BUY the wintv7 disk like I had to before.
All I want is, I have cable tv. I ran a line from my cable TV box to the card in the computer. Since I cannot use the Wintv7 program, I am forced to use windows media center-and thats a farce. Media center wants to be the cable box (or tuner) and just doesnt know how to make a single connection to another tuner. I want to switch channels with the cable box, and record TV with the wintv card. But media center cannot "find" the channel, because it wants to be the tuner. I even saw it displayed on there working, clicked on it but somehow it didnt stay. Media center is a pain!

Other Thoughts: If anyone knows of a program that will display TV on my computer that is FREE, please let me know! (other than media center!!!) Im using a dual core Pentium processor, windows 7 64 bit, ATI gaming card.

Pros: Works with Media Center on Win 7 64 bit with minimal setup effort.

Cons: Uses a lot of CPU cycles. E6700 3.2 GHz >50% load used when card is running.

Other Thoughts: There appears to be a conflict between CyberPower's UPS Software "PowerPanel Personal Edition Management Software" and my version of the WINTV-HVR-1250 MC Board for Windows Media Center Model 1187.

Installing the UPS software after the WINTV working tuner is verified to work causes the OS (Win 7 Pro 64 bit on a Gigabyte P43T-ES3G board) to stop recognizing the tuner on both WinTV7 and Media Center.

A system restore to before the UPS software fixes the problem.