Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner w/ MPEG-2 Encoder PCI-E x1 - OEM

Pros: Works great with my system (below). Windows Media Center makes this card into an out of the box DVR on my PC. It just works! Dual recording - no prob.
Win7 Pro
Phenom II X4 955
6GB Ram
x64

Cons: None yet, been running strong for 2 yrs+

Other Thoughts: The channel organization is a little befuddling but I don't know enough to know if it is a WMC thing or just a digital TV comcast thing. Either way its not the card's problem.

Pros: 2 tuners, does OTA fine, works in Linux with the steventoth.net firmware. decent price. Works with mythtv fine.

Cons: Signal strength seems to be a little bit less than the single tuner Hauppauge card I used to have... 2 or 3 channels are gone now (with the same antenna setup)

Other Thoughts: 10TBs of disk space and bye bye cable companies

Pros: can record two things at once, choice of analog and digital for each of the two, lots of options for analog input, clear-QAM support under WMC and BeyondTV, Low Profile option included

Cons: One antenna input so both pairs of tuners confined to same rf stream, could not get blaster to work under windows 7 even with 'help' from hauppauge support. Installation of wintv 7 required CD drive to 'authenticate', and the disk that comes with this tuner doesn't qualify.

Other Thoughts: I bought this for my new beyondTV server build, which required a low-profile card. I found that the CPU load for QAM was less with this tuner than via HDHomerun via tcp/ip. Got past the lack of blaster function by resurrecting my microsoft 'vista mc blaster'.

using wintv (required me to install a cd drive temporarily and use an old wintv disk to 'authenticate') allowed me to fully check out every feature of the card before I turned up BTV.

Pros: none

Cons: I tried every driver available from the Hauppauge product site. When installing drivers for this card I get messages of "compatible hardware not found" or "Driver not digitally signed". Without the drivers this card is useless. I checked the device ID using Device manager in Windows 7. The hardware ID of the card is listed in the drivers as being supported. I tried 3 different cards, 2 from another e-tailer and 1 from Newegg. I was let down every time.

Other Thoughts: Windows 7 64bit
Bloodrage X58 mobo P10 bios
I7 920 Overclocked to 4GHz
Corsair H110 cpu cooler
Mushkin DDR3 Ram 6GB 1600 MHz 7-8-7-20-60-1T
PowerColor PCS+ HD7970 Vortex II GPU
2 OCZ Agility 2 SSDs in Raid 0 for OS
2 Samsung Spinpoint 502J HDDs for data storage
Antec Signature 850 PSU
HAF 932 case

Pros: Easy to install and hook up. I have been using this tuner to record two tv shows at the same time since 2009 without a snag. The driver installed easy enough and works great with Windows Media Center. It also can be used for Clear channels but I don't have cable tv so I don't use that particular option. The card takes up one slot and it can be used with a remote control. So you can sit in your couch and use the remote control to turn on Windows Media Center and watch all your Programmed shows. Almost as good as having an expensive DVR but cheaper.

Cons: The remote control sometimes its difficult to get it to work properly. But once it does it works very well. Otherwise no negative comments about the product.

Pros: Pulls in a ton of HD channels from my provider (Nulink Digital). Fairly easy to set up. I had to manually add my channels/listing info in WMC. IR connector is a nice feature

Cons: Non really. The included software isn't that great so I just use WMC which works perfectly.

Other Thoughts: I have one in each of my PC's (one is a dedicated HTPC). One was OEM and the other was full retail so I have the IR and remote.

WMC and Xbox remote commands from my Harmony remote get mixed up. When I use my remote to power down my HTPC/TV setting it will power up my xbox. Had to turn the xbox sideways. No biggie... adapt and move on.

Pros: None

Cons: Crashes computer when tuner is engaged. Huppauge web page has a fix with new software. That doesn't work either. Webpage software will not recognize Factory CD to complete the installation. Shows no conflict in Control Panel, but will not work with Vista Ultimate 64 Bit.

Pros: Easy to install!
Works great!!
Great picture!!

Cons: NONE!

Other Thoughts: Buy it, you will love it. Works great with WMC, and super easy to install.

Pros: I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but I'm still getting this set on my Fedora 17 linux network. I've got it physically installed on mythtv backend server, but two SiliconDust HDHomerun boxes are providing the OTA frontend, while I try to figure out the proper QAM tables for Surewest HD in Kansas City to feed to mythtv DB. I work at this in bits and pieces because I've got so much other stuff going on. I'll get it working eventually and may post an update when I do. For now my rating is based on the fact that the signal strength, quality and SNR are both quite good for the QAM256 info coming over the wire from Surewest. Getting it running on mythtv under linux is NOT plug and play, however!

Cons: Not plug and play under linux.

Other Thoughts: If I was using this for OTA I'm sure I'd probably have it working now, but I've got OTA covered with my HDHomerun boxes.

Pros: None for this card so far. I did have several good years of experience with their PVR-350 when I was running WIN XP. Not compatible with WIN 7.

Cons: Bought on 10/09/12, and still unable to use. (WIN 7 Ultimate, 64 bit.)

The driver installation program on the enclosed disk sometimes seems to succeed (I’ve installed and reinstalled the card several dozen times in a few different PCIEX1 slots, wasting many hours.)

Device Manager recognizes the card after some installations and sometimes does not.

The driver installation program ALWAYS states “Compatible hardware not found” even when, at the conclusion of the run, the message states that the driver(s) have been successfully installed.

Hauppauge Support ignored the “Compatible hardware not found” message (I sent screen shots) and concentrated on the WINTV v.7 installation until I told him my card came with only Windows Media Center installation, at which point he disappeared.

I have both WMC and WINTV v.7 working but, since the card is not recognized, it’s of no use. It cannot locate channels.

Other Thoughts: It’s probably a faulty card (“Compatible hardware not found”) which should have been recognized by Hauppauge Support and I should be looking for a replacement. One of these days, I’ll get around to it.