Hauppauge 1120CN WinTV-HVR-950 Hybrid Video Recorder

I bought this tuner in preparation for a two-week long camping trip down to Denver & back.. Didn't end up using it at all (given the choice between mountain biking in Moab and watching TV, I think you can guess which one won out), but I did experiment with it quite a bit before the trip and thought I should share my experiences.My laptop is a Fujitsu S2010 that I've had for several years now. The processor is an Athlon XP 1700+ and I was very concerned that it wouldn't be able to handle the picture at all. Turns out I had a bit of reason to be concerned, but not as much as one would think. Everything in standard def worked flawlessly; hooked up to a powered antenna in the trailer, channels came in clear and everything looked great. Better still were the 480p digital channels that the tuner picked up; several local stations broadcast their standard broadcast in digital format and these were the best in terms of picture & sound quality. Once things stepped up to the true wide-screen high def format, though, all bets were off. The audio would still come in perfectly, but watching the show was like watching a slideshow as it was only every 10th frame or so of the video that would be displayed.In short, this unit does work exactly as advertised, but keep in mind that it may or may not work for your older laptop/desktop depending on what you want to do with it. For me, it's a keeper as I get to watch all the standard def programming now and I'm sure I'll get a new laptop by the time all broadcasts get switched over to digital.One last note: be sure to get the latest software install kit from the Hauppauge website! I did and didn't encounter a single problem with the install or the software.

- GENERAL -Get the latest drivers, etc. here: [...]NOTE: Newer versions of this card actually show up on device manager as version 980, instead of 950.My Setup: Vista Home Premium, Windows Media Center (built into Vista Home Premium and up), Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz (E6850), 2GB RAM, nVidia 256MB 8400GSOverall, the card is a pretty good deal when you compare it to PCI cards. If you get a discount or rebate you might get it for less than 50.- HD V. ANALOG -This card really shines in ATSC HD mode (using an antenna). The difference between analog and HD is almost like night and day! It's amazing how much better HD looks, even in the exact same computer.You should also know that with HD signals you either get the signal and it looks awesome or you don't and you don't see anything. With regular over the air TV you would get fuzzy channels if you don't get a good enough signal, but with HDTV you will either don't get the channel at all if the signal is too poor or you will get dropped frames (or skipping) if the signal's almost good enough. The dropped frames can be very distracting - it reminds me of fast forwarding or a scratched DVD, so you will probably need to get an antenna to actually get a good HDTV experience.THIS CARD WILL NOT RECEIVE CABLE HDTV, it only works with over the air HDTV using an antenna.On the other hand, analog reception (from cable at least) is good or "OK", but a little washed out and grainy/snowy when compared to the WinTV-HVR-1800 (PCI), which I've used side by side. The analog reception would be good as a secondary unit, or a good primary card if your computer's not very fast or you don't care too much about analog quality.- SOFTWARE -I haven't used the bundled software because I used previous incarnations of it and the reviews indicate it hasn't improved much. It's supposed to work with XP Media Center and all sorts of other programs, but I can't attest to that.The card works amazingly well in HD mode with Vista Media Center, but you need to install an encoder if you plan on using it in analog mode (look for "MCE software encoder" here: [...] Also, you can only use it as analog OR HD mode in MC, but apparently you can switch between modes with the WinTV software. That's not a problem for me, since I'm using this as a secondary card, but it's a downside if you want to use it as a primary card in Vista MC.- OTHER THOUGHTS -Again, you might need to get an antenna to receive HDTV over the air, but if you're close to HDTV transmitters the included antenna might get you a good enough signal. I'm only a few miles (around 5) from transmitters and the included antenna gets me:- 3 channels with a good enough reception (no skipping or dropped frames)- 3 more with spotty reception (a few frames get drop every now and then)- 2 more channels that are scrambled or don't have a good enough signal to be viewed- FINAL THOUGHTS -I strongly recommend this card for HDTV. The quality is just amazing and the price is difficult to beat (particularly if you get a discount). In analog mode, this is a good secondary card if you already have one, or a good primary card if you're on a tight budget or if your computer is older or not very powerful. Fortunately, my computer's fast enough and I didn't run into performance problems. As with any hardware upgrade, you should consider your system's performance before getting it.If your system's good enough, it's hard to go wrong with this cardIt gets a 4 because compared to the WinTV-HVR-1800, the analog signal's not as good (but still good) and it requires software not included in the Disc to work with Media Center - it took me a while to figure this out. If I didn't compare it to the WinTV-HVR-1800, it would probably get a 5, but if I had to use the included software, it would probably get a 3.

As many others have pointed out, the hardware works fine, but the software is very poor, even after installing the updates from the website (both in XP and Vista). People rave about Hauppauge, but you would not know it from using this product. Has no problems finding channels, in fact, the included antenna is quite good and has a slightly magnetic base. Recordings take up a lot of space, as expected, but will play back on slower hardware... in fact, I had no problems getting up to 720p content to play on Athlon XP processors with no issues or visible dropped frames (even recording HD up to 720p seems to work OK on this slower hardware). However the included software encoder introduces errors into the beginning of the files, which appear to be due to missing I frames; a fundamental problem that has not been fixed by Hauppauge drivers. VLC can handle the files but most players and transcoder applications will error out. In addition because of this Windows will crash when opening the video files directory... I have not yet figured out how to solve this problem in Vista other than disabling preview. As others have pointed out using the "primary" application will solve stuttering issues with recording using the included software, but the problem will still exist with 3rd party software and media center. The wintv32 and 2000 applications need quite a bit of tweaking to get the correct aspect ratio on your monitor. Also on those applications many of the menu items are very limited. TitanTV integration is nice, in fact, seemingly the only way to reliably schedule a recording. Overall the hardware seems to be fine, but even the most up to date software and drivers are very poor compared to other HDTV offerings on the market.