Customer Reviews

Hauppauge HVR 2200 MCE Dual Hybrid PCI Express Card With Hardware Encoding

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It was only when I received this item that I realized that it was an OEM package. I had expected to have cables, software and, more importantly, a Microsoft MCE certified remote control. It was only after various emails to the supplier that I found the package details - had to click through about 3 links before the package contents appeared - that indicated that it was likely to be an OEM unit. I also found that the supplier was very slow to respond to my emails.

Overall, the card does work very well with Media Center. But if you want the remote and extra cables and software, verify with the supplier that it is the full retail package first.

I have used this card with Windows 7 64 bit version of Media Center and it works fine. I downloaded the latest driver from the Hauppauge web site rather than use the one supplied with the card. I'm only interested in the digital TV tuners, so I haven't given much attention to the two analogue TV tuners, in fact I have not installed the analogue TV tuners in Media Center.
There is an FM tuner included on the card which has a separate ariel connector. This seems to work OK in Media Center, but I will probably not use it as radio channels are already included as television free-view channels.
Digital teletext (press the red button stuff) is included on the card and works well. Some other cards don't include this.
There is an S-video input with an associated sound input jack socket. I was planning to use this to take copies of some of the things I have on VHS tape before retireing the VHS player for good, but this has not worked well yet. Firstly, the VHS player does not have an S-video output so I will have to use an adaptor plugged into the VHS scart socket. Secondly, Media Center does not seem to find the S-Video port. I tried to overcome this by connecting via the ariel ports, but this didn't work well. It seems that the card (or perhaps Media Center) is expecting very stable video from a broadcast source. The lower quality video from a VHS constantly breaks up when viewed in Media Center. I suspect the solution will be to record with something like Windows Movie Maker rather than Media Center, but I have not had time to try this yet.
There is one querk which I would like to pass on. If the PC is rebooted, then sometimes Media Center cannot find the two TV tuners afterwards, even though the card looks fine in device manager. The solution is to do a complete power off, and remove the power lead to the PC for a few seconds.
In summary, I think this a great card, and I am about to buy another the same.

The product is fine, performs well in Windows 7 Ultimate. I really didn't need the analogue capability which is no longer needed, but it doesn't interfere. Works much better as a digital dual tuner than my old Nova which gave up the ghost.

Bob

My home PC runs Windows XP SP3 Media Center Edition 2005 and originally came bundled with a Kworld USB DVB-T tuner. What a dire piece of junk it was leading to many wasted hours trying to get it to work before it went in the bin.

The Hauppage HVR 2200 MCE card however has been completely at the other end of the spectrum; swap mounting plate from fitted slim-line to (included in box) full height, plug it in to the mother board, boot the PC, load the drivers, run the simple setup via Media Center (so I didn't need to install the included TV utility), and away I went.

Total reliability from the outset, no crashes, no BSODs, no "Tuner not found", in fact none of the hassle I had become used to. Picture quality
is excellent.

Highly recommended, and well worth the relatively "premium" price tag. Handy that it fits in a PCI Express bay too since I had already used all the available PCI bays in the PC!

Any downsides? Only one; channel sensitivity. My home office in which the mentioned PC is housed has the longest cable run from loft-mounted Antiference 200 Pro series 8 way powered splitter. To begin with the tuner card only found 32 channels (nearly all of which were freeview digital radio!) even with gain set to the maximum 12db, whereas a normal Freeview TV in the same socket found all channels. Out of interest I connected the office coax cable to the "full" (16db) output intended to drive another splitter and bingo, I had every single available channel (nearly 100 tv and radio)

I recently had two PCI Hauppauge NOVA-T's in my media center.. I rebuilt my system with a new MOBO and Vista 64BIT OS.

Plugged this in, had no problems with drivers.

Advantage of this card is it only requires one Aerial input, its PCI-express x1, and the channel changing is quicker than the NOVA-T.

Unfortunately MCE only allows the use of up to Two tuners, but there are registry hacks out there that allow more as I intend to use my NOVA T's still

Very easy to setup and configure - works flawlesly on Vista x64 - although I would suggest updating the software, available from Hauppauge website.

This is the TV tuner only, no remote control is included.

I've had two of these both failed after a few months - pixellaltion and slow images.. The customer support was poor - they sent me some monitoring software but it couldn't detect any signal. When I told them this they said it was my firewall - which I had disabled. Beyond this they had no idea and offered no further support.

I bought from another supplier and it's fine.

I purchased this card to work on new Windows 7 system The videon & audio work fine and the programme recording scheduler in the Win 7 pack is very easy to set up and use.
So far I have been unable to get the card to work with my Windows Media Center. I think that the problem is probably due to the Windows 7 upgrade installation, but there are no patches or fixes mentioned on the internet as yet.

A replacement media PC turned out to have new-fangled PCIe slots so I couldn't transfer our old tuner card as hoped. It looked from the picture as if this would work in a short slot (e16), but it didn't. It does work in a long slot, however, and with no fuss. Vista Media Center has no trouble using it to record two channels simultaneously. Only very rarely does the picture jerk & we did have lots of trouble with jerking with our first tuner card. We haven't yet used the card's analog input because we haven't figured out how to connect the old video recorder to the card's S-video port.

product works brilliantly only problem is that to receive 2 chanels you need 2 arials however a splitter is only 3 pounds