Date: May 3, 2007 - Author: Greg King
If you are looking for a portable WinTV solution from Hauppauge, you are in luck. The HVR-950 is capable of handling both normal and high-def TV and fits in a pocket! The largest draw might just be it's $90 price tag.
We live in an increasingly mobile world. This can easily be verified by simply looking around online and reading about the latest and greatest mobile technology. Also take into consideration the vast amounts time, effort and money pumped into the mobile market each and every year. With devices going wireless, we can now browse from our couches, on the interstate (assuming your not driving) and on our portable devices like a phone, a PDA or a Blackberry.
For years we have been able to grab our headphones and enjoy music on a hike, bike ride or job thanks to radio waves. Well, why can’t we do that with television? It too travels across airwaves. Why not watch it on our notebooks and smart phones?
With the help of Hauppauge, we now can. While not revolutionary, Hauppauge aims to join the mobile market of TV adapters for our PCs. With everything housed on a simple USB 2.0 stick, albeit a large USB stick, the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 950. How well does it work and does the signal quality merit it’s relatively small $90USD asking price?
Coming in a compact package, the purple box is full of relevant information. With the unit centered in a protective plastic shell, we can start to get a firm idea of just how small the 950 is.
Aww, the little TV tuner is Vista certified. While we at Techgage haven’t exactly warmed up to Vista yet, we understand it’s place in the PC world, for better or worse, and with the computability problems that have plagued the OS since it’s launch, it’s good to see that this product will work out of the box with that OS.
Moving on to the device itself, once out of the box, we can start to appreciate it compact design. With our last review of a Hauppauge product, the WinTV-PVR 350 PCI card, all of the necessary encoding and decoding was done on the card’s chip itself. That will not be the case with the 950.
Starting with the antenna, we see it in it’s down position. When contracted in, the antenna stands approximately 5 inches tall. Snaking out of the base of the antenna is the cord. With its coaxial end, the 950 will connect to it’s antennae though this cord.
When extended, the antenna stands about a foot and a half tall. While not huge by any stretch of the imagination, this should be the perfect height for all of you mobile warriors out there.
The stick itself is not much larger than an average USB thumb drive. With a cap on the end, it’s only a matter of time before it comes up missing? I have been looking for the cap to my OCZ Rally drive for the better part of 2 months.
As stated earlier, the business end of the 950 is a coaxial connector to allow the connection of either the antenna or a cable/satellite connection for all of you home users out there.
And at the other end, the USB 2.0 port. I say USB 2.0 not because it will not work in an older USB slot, but rather it is a requirement if you are to use the HVR 950.
On the side of the stick we see a RoHS sticker, and a small, USB like connector. I honestly have no idea what this is used for and it stated the use for this nowhere in the manual that I could see.
For those of you who might not be able to get the 950 into an open USB slot due to the thickness of the stick, there is an included USB male to female adapter. This cable is just under a foot long and should allow you to use the 950 is any open USB slot on your PC.
Finally, included in the box is the driver CD. This disk includes not only the system drivers for the 950, but also the programs needed to use the stick to it’s fullest.
Let's move onto installation!
Installation of the HVR-950 was as straight forward as a USB device can be. Simply plug in the USB end into an available slot and connect the antenna to the device. It’s that simple. Once installed, the CD needs to be inserted into the drive and the drivers will install themselves. While auto play is enabled on my PC, the disk did not automatically start. To work around this, I opened my computer, viewed the CD’s content and ran the file cleverly titled "Setup.exe"
The first screen asks us to pick our language.
The next screen gives us a long list what can be installed. These options include the necessary decoders, manuals, registration information and the WinTV application that will be the heart of the software suite.
Once everything is installed, we open up the WinTV program. It is this app that will allow us to scan and watch not only standard television channels but also high definition stations. To start the process, we simply select scan.
The scanning of the channels is a slow process. To scan all of the available channels available in my area, it took just under 10 minutes. Not exactly convenient when your sitting in an airport waiting on a plane and you don’t have a whole lot of time.
However, should you find a station that you would like to watch and the program is still scanning the airwaves, you can always stop the scan at anytime. This will stop the scan, but allow you to watch any of the stations that have already been registered with the channel manager.
You can also choose between standard broadcast stations and cable should you be at home and want to watch cable or satellite television on your notebook. This scenario is ideal for those using this device as a portable DVR.
When the Hauppauge finished scanning the airwaves, it picked up a handful of local standard definition stations but it found over a dozen HD stations. With me living in the country, well out in the country, the fact that it found that many stations was impressive to say the least. I suppose this isn’t anything special about the Hauppauge per se, but rather, I am surprised that there are that many offered out in the sticks.
With the local stations leaving little to be desired, the picture can be seen in the following picture. Nothing truly say crappy television like the 700 club. Thanks Indiana for giving us that.
With that out of the way, things start looking up when we tune into WFYI in high definition.
When using the 950 to record live television, simply map the save location and press record. It’s simple and can record as much as your hard drive can store. One thing to take into consideration, and this falls into the common sense category, is that when recording a high definition signal, it takes up roughly 3 times the amount of space that a standard def signal does. To help minimize space, you can play around with the compression settings if you so desire.
When talking about the toll that the device take on system resources, it depends on the PC that you are using. To test out the 950, I used my E6600 machine, an old 2.66 GHz Pentium 4 machine I am using as a Windows update and Symantec Anti-Virus server as well as my notebook that has a Core Duo.
On the Conroe machine, running WinTV and watching a high def signal, CPU usage was around 15 percent. On the notebook, it hovered around 30 percent. On the older Pentium 4 machine, WinTV virtually crippled the PC and CPU usage averaged out around 86 percent.
This was perfectly acceptable and ran completely smooth when nothing else was running. This would be perfect if all you wanted to do was take in your favorite show on your PC but should you want to work on a power point presentation as well, older PCs might have a bit of trouble with this.
The Hauppauge HVR 950 fills a slot in the Hauppauge stable of products and deserves to be recognized for this. It accepts high definition stations and allows you to use your PC as a portable DVR. Add in the ease of use and the 950 is a wining product. During our time with the device we ran into zero problems and for its size, and sub $100 price, it performed quite well. For this, the Hauppauge earns a 9 out of 10 and an Editor’s Choice award.
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