Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 Review

By Jeff Fila
July 23rd, 2004


Summary

Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR-250 TV tuner and capture card is the product of choice for HTPC enthusiasts and Windows Media Center system builders, and for good reason. There certainly are lower-priced solutions available, but the PVR-250 has quite an advantage over them with its hardware based MPEG encoder, saving valuable processor performance for other tasks.

Onboard analog connectors allow you to not only watch, record and pause TV, but they allow you to record from other sources such as VCRs and analog video cameras.

And while Hauppauge's bundled software doesn't quite cut it as a TiVo replacement, a PVR front end such as Snapstream's BeyondTV3 can make your PC a much more powerful — and upgradeable — centerpiece to your home theater.

Full Review

Introduction

In the attempt to turn your PC into an all-encompassing home-theater system, one of the most important components is the TV tuner. With the ability to watch, record and archive TV shows, a good TV tuner can help the do-it-yourself types build a system that rivals set-top-box solutions from TiVo, ReplayTV, and cable providers.

One of the most popular TV tuners with HTPC builders is the subject of this review, the WinTV-PVR-250 by Hauppauge which can be found online and in retailers for under $175.

Features and Design

The WinTV-PVR-250 is a PCI-slot TV tuner and video capture card that allows you to watch, record and pause live TV in a window or full screen. . The “PVR” in the model number stands for Personal Video Recorder, which like TiVo or ReplayTV, allows you to watch, record and pause live TV.  It features a 125-channel tuner and is a bit different — and better — than most other TV tuners in that it features onboard hardware MPEG-2 compression. MPEG-2 is the video format natively used by DVDs and many multimedia programs and devices, making it ideal for a PC-based TV Tuner.

It is this hardware based encoding that makes the PVR-250 an excellent choice for home-theater PCs and TV recording. Other PCI-based TV tuners as well as those found on the ATI All-In-Wonder line of video cards use software to encode the incoming TV signal into a useable format (usually MPEG-2). This design taxes the system's processor and memory and results in video of often sub-standard quality. A hardware-based encoder, such as that found on the PVR-250 handles all of the compression onboard, allowing the processor to be freed up for other uses. Hardware encoding is faster and often times results in higher quality videos.


Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR-250 TV tuner and video capture card.

Besides the onboard hardware encoder, the PVR-250 features a coax, S-Video and composite inputs, and infrared remote control and a stereo audio input. Included in the retail box is:

  • WinTV PCI bus card with 125 channel cable-ready TV tuner, hardware MPEG-2 encoder, dbx-TV stereo, S-Video/composite plus audio inputs 
  • Infrared remote control transmitter and receiver 
  • WinTV CD-ROM includes: 
    • WinTV2000 application for TV in a window, Program Pause, TV record and playback 
    • WinTV-Scheduler for scheduling your TV recording 
    • WinTV MPEG editor for high quality cutting and pasting of your video movies 
    • Ulead DVD MovieFactory, to author your own videos on DVD or CD
  • Installation and reference manual

Installation and Setup

Installing the WinTV-PVR-250 is fairly straightforward and simple, but it does take a bit of time to install all of the drivers and applications. There are separate installations for the remote control drivers, the TV tuning software, the capture card drivers and the additional software bundled with the unit. WinTV 2000 is the application that handles live TV viewing as well as the PVR functions.

Once you install the card in the PCI slot, install the software and plug your cable TV wire into the card, you allow WinTV to scan for channels. With the channels added to you lineup, you are able to use the remote control, mouse, or keyboard to navigate through the channels and watch TV. There is a slight lag associated with changing the channel but it is not a big concern.

Watching and Recording TV

WinTV allows you to watch TV in full-screen or windowed mode. If you are using your PVR-250 equipped computer as a workstation, windowed mode allows you to work in other windows while still watching TV. The application works like any other windowed application, allowing you to resize and move live TV at will. Resizing is as easy as dragging a corner or side, and by default the application will always keep the correct aspect ratio even if you only drag one side. One thing that may be annoying to some users is the fact that the remote control only works when the WinTV application is the active window. So, if you are working on a document in one window while watching TV in another, you must first click on the WinTV application before you change channels.

There are onscreen controls for changing the channels, pausing and recording TV and most other normal PVR functions. One nice feature of WinTV is the ability to take screenshots of live TV or any input that you may be viewing. The system allows six different image sizes, from 320x250 all the way up to 1600x1200 and stores them as .JPG files.


The WinTV 2000 application allows you to record and pause live TV.

We tested the Hauppauge WinTv-PVR-250 in two different PCs: one with an AMD Athlon XP 1600+ and 512MB of RAM and the other with an AMD Athlon XP 2800 Barton with 1024MB of RAM. The difference between the two was noticeable as the slower processor took quite a hit while watching and recording TV — with utilization anywhere between 50 to 80 percent. CPU usage in the system with the 2800+ was much lower and it handled multitasking much better. This is not to say that a system with lower specifications will not be able to handle watching TV and doing other tasks, but performance will be noticeably lower. Hauppauge lists the minimum specifications for the PVR-250 as a 733MHz or faster processor for full screen playback and pausing but that may be pushing the limits.

One thing that WinTV is lacking is a robust scheduling feature. Scheduling is done by channel and time only — meaning you have to know what time and channel the programs you want to watch and record are on. Hauppauge has addressed this by bundling the PVR-250 with TitanTV's web-based scheduling application. TitanTV is a robust scheduling program with advanced recording features and an excellent search function that works well in conjunction with WinTV.

Watching and Recording TV (continued)

Pausing live TV is as simple as hitting the pause button on the remote control. There is, however, a slight lag associated with the pausing as it takes a few seconds to initialize the feature. The lag is only two or three seconds, but it happens when pausing and when resuming live TV, which may make you miss a few seconds of your program. WinTV allows you to set the size of your “pause buffer” at any size up to 1000MB. Likewise it allows you to set the quality and size of your recordings and pause buffer.


WinTV 2000 allows you to easily set the pause buffer size and the quality of recordings.

MPEG-2 video can be recorded at a number of settings and as high as 12Mbit per second. Recording quality is dependent on what the desired use of the video is and most importantly, how much hard drive space you have. High-quality recordings of complete shows will take up quite a bit of space, as full screen TV will take up about 2GB per hour. Playback quality is excellent, and it is hard to tell the difference between live TV and recorded shows at the highest quality settings.

Full recording specifications are as follows:

  • MPEG1 recording at 1150K bits/sec (Video CD data rate) 
  • MPEG2 record datarates: 2MBit/sec, 4MBit/sec, 6Mbit/sec, 8Mbit/sec, 12Mbit/sec.
  • Selections for DVD Standard play (8MBitsec), DVD Long Play (4MBit/sec) and DVD Extra Long Play (2MBit/sec) 
  • NTSC format at 29.97fps: Full D1: 720x480, MPEG1: 352x240 
  • PAL format at 25fps: Full D1: 720x576, MPEG1: 352x288
  • Audio capture formats: 32/44.1/48 KHz, 16bit stereo, 192/224/384Kbits/sec 
  • Chroma sampling: YUV 4:2:0 
  • Video file format: .MPG

Recorded programming can be played back on your computer, transferred to another device or recorded to a DVD. We had no compatibility issues with the MPEG-2 recordings from the WinTV-PVR-250 when we burned DVDs with Ulead's MediaStudio and DVD Movie Factory.

Using the WinTV-PVR-250 as a Full-Fledged PVR

If you want to record and watch TV on your computer workstation, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better capture card than the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250. With an onboard MPEG-2 encoder, the PVR-250 handles TV viewing easily and efficiently.

However, the included software bundle is not as robust or easy enough to use from the comfort of a couch to warrant using it as a full-fledged PVR. Luckily, there are much better software suites available that can really give TiVo and set-top boxes a run for their money. One such product is Snapstream's BeyondTV3, which truly can turn your computer into a fully-functional PVR. BeyondTV3 can be purchased separately for as little as $59.99 and Snapstream even offers the WinTV-PVR-250 in a bundle package at a considerable discount. Those looking to make a PC the center of their TV viewing will appreciate the ease of use and powerful features of BeyondTV3. Look for a full writeup of what BeyondTV3 can do as compared to TiVo at Designtechnica next week.

Conclusion

Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR-250 TV tuner and capture card is the product of choice for HTPC enthusiasts and Windows Media Center system builders, and for good reason. There certainly are lower-priced solutions available, but the PVR-250 has quite an advantage over them with its hardware based MPEG encoder, saving valuable processor performance for other tasks.

Onboard analog connectors allow you to not only watch, record and pause TV, but they allow you to record from other sources such as VCRs and analog video cameras.

And while Hauppauge's bundled software doesn't quite cut it as a TiVo replacement, a PVR front end such as Snapstream's BeyondTV3 can make your PC a much more powerful — and upgradeable — centerpiece to your home theater.

Specs

WinTV-PVR-250 includes:

  • 125 channel cable ready TV tuner
  • Composite/s-video input to connect to VCR or camcorders
  • High quality MPEG1/MPEG2 video and audio encoder
  • dbx-TV stereo decoder (Nicam stereo decoder in Europe)
  • IR remote control
  • The WinTV-PVR-250's TV tuner and S-Video/composite video inputs are for either PAL or NTSC.  

MPEG record specifications:

  • MPEG1 recording at 1150K bits/sec (Video CD data rate)
  • MPEG2 record datarates:
    • 2MBit/sec, 4MBit/sec, 6Mbit/sec, 8Mbit/sec, 12Mbit/sec.
  • Selections for DVD Standard play (8MBitsec), DVD Long Play (4MBit/sec) and DVD Extra Long Play (2MBit/sec)
  • NTSC format at 29.97fps: Full D1: 720x480, MPEG1: 352x240
  • PAL format* at 25fps: Full D1: 720x576, MPEG1: 352x288
  • Audio capture formats: 32/44.1/48 KHz, 16bit stereo, 192/224/384Kbits/sec
  • Chroma sampling: YUV 4:2:0
  • Video file format: .MPG
  • MPEG file tested compatible with: MediaStudio 6.0, MyDVD and DVD MovieFactory DVD authoring applications 

System Requirements:

  • Pentium® II processor 733MHz or faster for TV pause with full screen playback
  • Windows®98SE (Second Edition), Windows® Millennium Edition, Windows2000 and WindowsXP.
  • Free PCI slot
  • Sound card
  • DVD or CD-RW writer (optional for burning DVDs or Video CD's)
  • VGA card (PCI or AGP) which supports video overlay (NVidia, S3, ATI, etc.)


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