Hauppauge PVR-500

Aidoscuz · 21 Jan 2007 at 17:01

Hey all

My friend is thinking of getting a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500 Media Centre Edition TV card to record NTL Cable on his PC. It seems like a good card, but I’m not sure if it will work on XP Home. I’ve seen some places that say it will, while the Hauppauge site seems to say it won’t. Can anyone confirm this?

Thanks in advance

Aidoscuz · 22 Jan 2007 at 15:20

Anyone?

Joe42 · 22 Jan 2007 at 16:12

Why is he buying a tv tuner card to record cable?
This is a digital tv tuner, so freeview.
To record cable i think he would need a video capture card. This tv card does that aswell, but you can get separate cards, many graphics cards do it. The pvr name indicates that this is both a dual tuner tv card and a video capture card. I have the non pvr version, the nova-t 500 which is almost the same but has no video capture functionality, just dual digital freeview tuners.

Hauppauge said:
Windows®XP Media Center Edition 2005, WindowsXP Home or WindowsXP Professional
Note: when using the WinTV-PVR-500 MCE with WindowsXP, you need a third party TV application such as SageTV or BeyondTV

So it would work with xp, and you can get plenty of free apps to work with it (the software that hauppage make that they include with most of their cards is dire and you have to use a free alternative anyway really), but he would be buying a dual tv tuner card and a video capture card in one, and he only needs the video capture card.

If he had xp mce, it would be fairly simple i think, you just buy a video capture card and use the ir blaster (an ir transmitter that mce uses like you use the remote control) to allow mce to control the cable set top box, and everything thats on cable will appear in the mce tv guide and will be recordable, pausable, rewindable etc just as if you had a cable tv card.
Of course, just like everything with mce, there are no options or settings, you just have to get hardware which you know works with mce and let it work it out, and thats an absolute nightmare.

Without mce though, he would have to simply set a timer on the recording software, thats it, he wouldn't be able to select programs to record and use a tv guide, only mce with an ir blaster to control the set top box can do that. Unless one of the free mce alternatives is able to control an ir blaster, this is likely but you'll have to look into it. media portal has some options for it but i'm not sure if it can actually control a set top box like mce can.

So for a video capture card, i assume you would just use the s-video and you could use something like this.
But i'm not sure if that has a timer on it.

Aidoscuz · 22 Jan 2007 at 22:47

Thanks very much for the reply.

I'm pretty sure the Tuner is analogue rather than digital though :

Hauppauge said:
WinTV-PVR-500 MCE contains two highly integrated MPEG hardware encoders plus two analogue TV tuners for analogue TV reception. There is also a separate built-in FM radio receiver.

It'll be used for analogue cable so there's just going to be an RF lead going from the wall into the back of the card. There isn't going to be a Set Top box involved. Will he be able to program stuff using something like MediaPortal with this setup?

Joe42 · 22 Jan 2007 at 22:52

I beg your pardon, i thought it was digital.

Its not a cable tuner, its a freeview tuner. You can't as far as i know plug a cable connection into it. And i don't know of any cable cards in this country at all. Although i admit my understanding of cable isn't very good, so i'll have to read up on it.

If the cable connection is just delivering exactly what an analogue tv aerial connection would deliver, or at least in the same format and standard, it ought to work. But i thought cable was an entirely different thing which requires a cable set top box, and i thought it was digital?

Edit: Wikipedia suggests you would need a cable tuner to receive cable, you can't use a normal analogue tv tuner, but hauppauge suggests that its card can recieve analogue cable, so i'm guessing it would work with analogue cable, but obviously not digital cable. I thought cable used an entirely different standard, but perhaps not.

Hades · 22 Jan 2007 at 23:25

I think there's some confusion over model numbers going on. You;re both right but on different model numbers

There are two '500' models in the Hauppauge range. One is for freeview and one is for satellite/cable:

WinTV Nova-T-500 twin digital tuner freeview card
WinTV-PVR-500 twin tuner satellite PVR card

Joe42 · 22 Jan 2007 at 23:50

I know there are two similar models, i have the nova t model.
The nova-t 500 is two digital tv tuners, the pvr 500 is two analogue tv tuners and a video capture device.

What i want to know is can a standard analogue tv tuner receive standard analogue cable or does this require a special tuner?

Hades said:
One is for freeview and one is for satellite/cable:

I thought one was two digital tuners and one is two analogue tuners.
For satellite you would need a satellite card, for digital cable you need a cable card (which don't exist in the uk), or a cable set top box.
What i'm not sure about is analogue cable, which is what the op is concerned with.

Buffalo2102 · 23 Jan 2007 at 02:29

Yes, the card should be able to tune into some analogue channels on the cable. BUT, most will be scrambled so you will probably only be able to get the usual BBC, ITV, CH4 and Five, plus one or two others. The quality may be suspect too as you don't really know what signal level you are going to get. And the analogue channels are disappearing from cable anyway.
I should also say that it is against the terms and conditions of the cable company for you to connect anything directly to their network other than an official set-top box.

Joe42 · 23 Jan 2007 at 16:52

Buffalo2102 said:
Yes, the card should be able to tune into some analogue channels on the cable. BUT, most will be scrambled so you will probably only be able to get the usual BBC, ITV, CH4 and Five, plus one or two others. The quality may be suspect too as you don't really know what signal level you are going to get. And the analogue channels are disappearing from cable anyway.
I should also say that it is against the terms and conditions of the cable company for you to connect anything directly to their network other than an official set-top box.

Thats what i thought, he must have had a set top box at one point.

Analogue cable is pretty rare these days, i suggest either your friend looks into getting digital cable and use a set top box with mce as i mentioned above, or he could get freeview if he can get it in his area, and thats completely free except for the cost of a new aerial and booster if needed and of course a digital tv tuner.

More info on freeview, channels available, coverage etc here.
Even if it says you can't get it you very often can with a decent aerial and masthead amp. And by the sounds of it he would be getting more or the same channels as he currently gets from his analogue cable but without paying a subscription.

Also worth checking with the cable company to see if they'll offer any good deals on digital cable for being a previous customer.