Hauppauge WinTV HVR850 USB HDTV Stick Adapter

I installed the device. Not too difficult. It took me quite a while to figure out how to record and play videos. Not intuitive for me. I have Windows Media Center on my laptop which is a much better system than what comes on the tuner disc. Media Center didn't recognize the tuner. It took me a couple of days and the internet to figure out how to get Windows Media Center to find the tuner. The internet instructions were slightly off. It worked with the long setup. Basically happy with the tuner. When I ran the Windows Media Center signal strength, it showed poor reception on most of the channels with this tuner. But even so most of those channels worked fine. It definitely has to be the tuner and not the antenna because when I run signal strength on my desktop (same indoor amplified antenna) with the built in tuner the signal strength shows good on most channels? I bought and returned Silicondust previously because sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Their tuner showed good signals on that same antenna(indoor with amplifier). But it just wouldn't work right and I couldn't figure it out and the instructions from Silicondust didn't help.

I love these Hauppauge tuner sticks and have owned a few of them. They work great for the non digital channels I get from Charter cable. The stick comes with a short USB extension cord which is usually necessary since the body of the stick is too fat to sit next to other USB plugs on the back of your computer. I have used these with laptops and desktop and they seem to work great. Picture quality if good (not fantastic but fine for me) and the price isn't bad. A regular coax cable screws onto one end and the other inserts in the USB extension. I did not need to use the CD as my Windows 7 rig identified the stick just fine. I use this with SAGE TV software but I know from past experience it works with Windows Media Center and with the DVR software that comes with it. Also has connection for FM but I don't use that.

I bought this solely based on the fact that it is meant to be compatible with Windows Media Center 7. It IS compatible and works quite well, however it has the following faults: - There is a very thin line at the top of the screen that looks like the encoded audio stream that is interfering with the video. You sometimes saw this line in VHS tapes that were not "tracked" correctly. This line does not appear if you use the Hauppauge provided TV software, only in WMC. I have not been able to find a way to eliminate this line. - Changing channels is quite slow. It could take 3-4 seconds to change channel. Perhaps this is true for all PC TV tuners, I wouldn't know, but I find it fairly annoying. Another point, which is mentioned fairly clearly in the feature list on the Hauppauge website, is that this tuner WILL NOT GIVE YOU CLEARQAM. This means you CANNOT view digital cable using this tuner, so no HD cable. It will only pick up analog cable. This tuner will also pick up ATSC, which is digital over-the-air signal using the provided small antenna. You can also plug in your own antenna if you wish. The provided antenna is not really powerful enough to pick up weaker signals, for me it could only really pick up the CBS HD signal. That said, this is a good product that for the most part does what it says on the box and does it well. I get a decent picture from analog cable and a very nice picture from the ATSC antenna (when it picks something up). I don't regret buying it, but I was willing to pay a little extra to get a brand name product and am not sure whether it fully delivers. I would like Hauppauge to address the above mentioned WMC issues, especially since they make a big deal of advertising that this tuner is WMC7-compatible.

The software is not compatible and will not open for Windows 7.

Not for me, I can't get it to pick up any signal. I had a Hauppauge card in my desktop computer but I left it in when I gave the computer to my son. So, I purchased this one and also a brand new desktop computer. I plugged it in to the same wall cable connection and then to the new computer. I've re-done that several times but I get no signal all the time. I have the newest Hauppauge DVD with the drivers etc. What comes in this box is the older release. I have not tried the small Ariel but I doubt if it will do what the cable cannot. I haven't decided to try another board or just purchase a small TV for my computer room. Unfortunately, I do have a huge flat monitor or I'd buy a HDTV for both purposes. I do not recommend this for myself but Hauppauge is a good brand to purchase. My son is happily using the board in his computer with no problems.

I am using this with an Ubuntu 13.10 / MythTV / XBMC media center, and it works great. My only complaint is that the setup process was horribly painful. I'm not sure if it's a problem with the tuner or with MythTV, but basically, scanning for channels in MythTV rarely detects any stations. You have to manually enter the transport frequencies of every station, and scan for them one-by-one. Again, this could just be a fault of MythTV, so I don't want to dock too many stars from the tuner, but it's hard to say for sure. Also, it was nice that an antenna is included, but the gain on it is so low as to be basically useless. I could only pick up about half of my local channels, and switched to a window antenna. For reference, the hardware id of this tuner (as reported by lsusb) is 2040:7240. Note that any other hardware revisions might not be compatible with Linux.

I purchases a digital tuner for a DVR I was building. For some reason it did not work. With a little research I discovered that the tv channels, where I was staying, were analog. This worked very well and now that I am staying at a place with digital tv I have 3 tuners for my DVR. This also worked for getting tv on my computer and the quality was really great and the program was easy to set up. I would defiantly recommend this product.

Been using this for years now on both the Mac OS and Win 7.x and 8.x. There's a world of difference between the software and performance for the two versions. The USB receiver module itself is the same and fully inter-changeable. The Mac version of WinTV is far far more graphic and user friendly than the PC version. Aside from being slow converting recorded TV shows to mp4, my experience with the Mac would get this device a 4-star rating. For the PC in 7.x and 8.1 I would rate the performance and software a 2-star rating. The interface locks up easily, slow to respond, just simply quits working, takes a while to change channels, the interface is awkward, counter-intuitive and looks very old. The PC version is unreliable and unstable. I am currently running it on three machines, two are 8.1 one is 7.x, the performance is the same, poor. For the Mac this device works very well but slow, otherwise it's fine. I would recommend it for Mac OS but not PC. The software for PC and functions very differently from the mac version.