Review of the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 950 Hybrid TV Stick

The Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 950 is a good USB TV Tuner that is simple to connect to any Windows Desktop or Notebook PC via USB. The WinTV-HVR 950 can be connected to Analog Cable coming into your house from your Cable Company or can pick up ATSC Digital channels using the included Antenna. Digital channels, including HDTV channels, come through very crisp. Analog cable quality is not quite as good, but still clear. A good buy for those wishing to have a mobile solution for viewing and recording analog and digital TV on their PC.

Pros

Cons

I enjoyed using the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 950 Hybrid TV Stick. The ability to capture over-the-air (OTA) Digital and HD channels with the included OTA Antenna, plus its small size and portability make the WinTV-HVR 950 a step above other USB TV Tuners. The included TV playback and recording software, WinTV2000 is adequate for watching TV on your PC and pausing and rewinding live TV like a DVR, but not as slick or comprehensive as Media Center software such as BeyondTV or SageTV. The WinTV Scheduler works for setting TV shows to record on a schedule, but isn't keyed into a programming guide, you must record by channel and time instead of by the show's name. Set up was fairly simple: attach either an analog Cable TV coaxial cable to the input on the HVR 950 or the OTA antenna, and then plug the device into a free USB port on your desktop or notebook PC. Once Windows finds the new device and copies the drivers from the install CD, you install the WinTV software. Upon opening the WinTV2000 software for the first time, you are taken through a wizard to scan for channels. This is a lengthy process for Cable TV as it scans through all the cable channels (usually around 80-90). The digital scan takes less time as there are a lot less Digital OTA channels. Once all the channels are scanned in, you're ready to start watching and recording TV on your PC. The picture quality on the HVR 950 is excellent for Digital OTA channels and good for analog Cable. TV Tuners in general work best on a computer with a fast processor and a good video card. I was able to test the HVR 950 on an Okoro Media Systems OMS-SX100 Media Center PC, which includes a Dual Core Intel processor and an Intel 256MB Video Card. The OMS-SX100 runs the Windows Media Center O/S, which worked great with the WinTV-HVR 950.