Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250

[EdwardATeller]

I was at Circuit City the other day, and they had this card for $59:

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2008/01/...ress-tv-tuner/

I don't have the right kind of motherboard, otherwise I might have taken it home for a test. Anyone try this board yet?

[mtyme]

According to that article, it's software encoder, not hardware. That's why the price is so low I think.

[EdwardATeller]

Originally Posted by mtyme

According to that article, it's software encoder, not hardware. That's why the price is so low I think.

For SD that's true, but HD is a direct stream copy. If it works, it is not a bad deal for $49. There are some reviews here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...uge-_-15116024

[mazakmaster]

will it work with sage? It is $49 now at cc. I want to use it just for qam channels.

[Ryand833]

Have either of you tried this in Sage yet?

I'm tempted to go buy one today and try it...

**EDIT**
I'm on my way home, I'm going to swing by Circuit City and pick one of these up. I'll let you know what I find tonight.

[Ryand833]

Well, good news and bad news.

The bad news: I slapped the card in my Sage box, and when I add the source and do a channel scan for ATSC OTA channels, it finds nothing at all.

The good news: I threw the card in another computer (this one), kept the antenna in the same place, fired up the trial version of Sage, and it successfully finds and tunes all of the OTA digital channels near me.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this....

Unfortunately I don't have a good source of analog or QAM, so I won't be able to test these...

I'll try some more stuff and report back with my results.

**EDIT**
I spoke too soon... the card is now scanning and finding my digital OTA signals in my Sage box... not sure what happened the first time, but it looks to be absolutely FANTASTIC now

[david1234]

I asked the same question last month.

I found the card very sensitive to how the antenna cable was attached- it wouldn't tune anything unless I used a cable without the center conductor sticking out just a bit more than normal.

The picture's good, but not quite up to the ati650, and the tuner doesnt' seem as sensitive.

[nathanwray]

I picked up an HVR-1250 from newegg last week and tried it in my sagetv box, next to my PVR-150's. I get 117 channels of clear QAM (WOW basic cable, Detroit metro area). It looks fantastic in WinTV.

In Sage 6.3 I get this error trying to add the video source:

"(-6,0x80004005) There was a problem setting up hardware video compression"

Which is a little strange, I believe it's a software compression card. I've messed with it all week trying various settings and whatnot, messing with drivers, etc. Finally sent an email to sage support and got this response:

> Nathan,
>
> Unfortunately, that capture device is not supported. Here is a list of
> currently supported capture cards.
> http://www.sagetv.com/requirements.html
> Thanks,
>
> George Oms
> SageTV, LLC

I don't know what magic you worked to get yours up and running Ryand833, but I'm throwing in the towel. I RMA'd the 1250 and ordered an HVR-1800 instead.

[Ryand833]

Hmm, strange.

Well, I'm getting OTA from mine, I haven't tried QAM on it.

I guess I'm just a little confused about why it needs to do compression at all if it's receiving digital...

[nathanwray]

Originally Posted by Ryand833

Hmm, strange.

Well, I'm getting OTA from mine, I haven't tried QAM on it.

I guess I'm just a little confused about why it needs to do compression at all if it's receiving digital...

I realized the difference after I posted, you're using it for ATSC. I think it's funny that it would work for one and not the other. Oh well, the HVR-1800 should be here Wednesday.

[thymceelie]

I've got a buddy with a 1250 and says QAM works fine for him.

[nathanwray]

Originally Posted by thymceelie

I've got a buddy with a 1250 and says QAM works fine for him.

It worked for me under wintv, just not in sage. Is your buddy running it under sage?

[thymceelie]

That was my understanding. I'm going over there tomorrow night, so I'll let you know after I see it in person.

[thymceelie]

He is indeed. Works great. Channel changes are a little slow, but other than that looks great.

[nathanwray]

Originally Posted by thymceelie

He is indeed. Works great. Channel changes are a little slow, but other than that looks great.

I'm pretty sure support just fobbed me off, I paid the restocking fee on the 1250 and bought an 1800 and I'm having the same issue.

[garys]

Just thought I'd chime in here with my recent HVR-1250 experience, since there doesn't seem to be much detailed info on getting them working with Sage yet:

I bought an HVR-1250 a few days ago and was initially frustrated that I couldn't get it to work in Sage but it worked fine when using WinTV software. It would appear to install ok in the source setup but then wouldn't find or tune any QAM channels.

After several failed attempts at getting it to work I submitted a support ticket and decided to do some searching on the forums here. I found some threads suggesting that other cards similar to it (the HVR-1800 and 1600) had only recently had support added for them in Sage. I got a message back from support saying the 1250 just isn't supported yet, and they are working on getting a unit from Hauppage so they didn't know when it would be... Since the posts I found were dealing with beta versions of 6.2 and I was on 6.1.x, I decided to try upgrading to the latest stable version to see if that would help.

So, I took a deep breath, backed up the my sage server, pulled the HVR-1250 out and upgraded to 6.3.10. (It had been humming along with 6.1.x without issues). The upgrade went smoothly and everything seemed to be working fine, after doing a little testing. So, I shut down the server and reinstalled the 1250 and this time only installed the drivers from the cd. I didn't install any other Hauppage software. When I went to add the source in Sage, there were two options for the new card where there had only been one before the Sage upgrade. One was the standard "WinTV 885 video capture" and the other was "WinTV 885 TS capture". After some googling I found out that TS means Transport Stream and I think this is the correct one to use if you're doing digital tuning - it works. Maybe someone who has a better understanding can elaborate on the differences...

To complete the setup, I chose digital tuner, selected my local cable provider's digital lineup, and said *NO* to the initial scan. I then disabled all channels and did a channel scan. It found all but two of my locals and a bunch of other QAM channels. I got this procedure from another post on getting one of the other HVR cards to work, so I don't know if it's necessary to do exactly this way, but it worked for me.

I was able to add the two missing channels by looking up the physical channel number on the silicon dust site under resources http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/hdhomerun/channels. The logical/physical channel numbers the scan found didn't match the ones in the imported channel lineup, so I had to find the original lineup ones and change those to match the physical channels from the scan. Then I just disabled the ones found by the scan (since they apparently can't be deleted?). I also changed the logical channel numbers to something more meaningful to me (ex: 438 to 5.1) There may be an easier way to do this, but this was my first crack at it and was just figuring it out as I went along.

I haven't recorded anything yet, but I've done some watching on placeshifter and MVPs (admittedly not the best test) and everything seems to be looking good so far. My newly ordered HD extender should be arriving any day now; that's when the HD fun really begins!!

HTH,

-Gary

[EdwardATeller]

Thanks for the info about mapping the channels, Gary. That has always confused me. I get it done, but I can't say I really understand what I am doing.

Looks like the HVR-1250 is now officially supported by the new STV release candidate.

[pianoman99]

Originally Posted by nathanwray

In Sage 6.3 I get this error trying to add the video source:

"(-6,0x80004005) There was a problem setting up hardware video compression"

I am seeing this error message as well, but only when trying to add the Hauppauge WinTV Video Capture (ANALOG) device. Has ANYONE out there managed to get the hvr-1250 to capture ANALOG channels? If so, please let me know how you're doing it! The TS Capture device is working fine for QAM.

[jcarr]

Has anyone found the definitive way to install this card? I can't get analog or digital channels. I've tried all of the above suggestions...

[dvd_maniac]

Looking at the hardware requirements on the Sage Support website it states that the 1250 is supported as a software encoding card.

Has anybody gotten the analog tuner on this to work?