Home > Consumer Reviews > Hauppauge 1213 WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual Hybrid PCI-E TV Tuner Board with Media Center Remote Control and Receiver

Wow, I really dont know if I should give this product a one star or five star. I'll settle for a three for the pain it caused me.

First, my system: Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz, 4GB DDR2RAM, 256MB ATI graphics card w/HDMI out, 640GB HDD, Vista Home Premium 32bit. I am located in the mountains of SoCal, where OTA doesnt quite work, and so ClearQAM from TimeWarner is my only option.

Let me start off by saying if you are looking for a dual-tuner for digital/analog viewing, this is one of your best choices. However, expect to spend a night or two of surfing forums, updating drivers, installing hotfixes, etc... The problem is that Vista Media Center (initially) doesnt recognize the ClearQAM tuner, only the analog tuners. How to fix this? Well, my 8 hours of pain can be your simple gain.
Disclaimer: you will be adding a value to Vista's registry if you follow this review, so anything you do is on you alone!

1) If you've been trying to get the tuner to work, wipe all the tuner's drivers off utilizing the utility on the CD (select total and the checkbox below it) and restart Vista.
2) Update Windows.
3) Install the HVR-2250 and the BETA drivers from Hauppauge's USA website.
4) Install TV Pack 2008 (search online for it)
5) Install PC Ready Play (from MS download site)
6) Install the 2 hotfixes (KB951585 and KB950754 from MS download site)
7) Update Windows. (there will be a cumulative update for TV pack)
8) Open the registry (run/regedit)
9) Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hcw89
10) Add a new Folder (key) and name it: Parameters
11) Add a new DWORD to that and name it: AllowQAM_PowerToy
12) Make that value for the new string: 1
13) *Repeat 10-12 for: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hcwPrx89
14) Reboot Vista
15) You should be good to go. When in Media Center, the automated set-up might still tell you that it found two analog tuners, which you then select manual set-up and go through the steps. You should see a choice for ClearQAM!

*Notes: the hcwPrx89 folder did not exist in my registry, so I had to create the folder and then add the DWORD.

For $130, I would expect Hauppauge to have either better drivers or better support. Scouring the forums will result in similar fixes like I describe above. I guess something similar to this works for Windows 7.

Oh, the good: it works like it's supposed to (after forementioned).
Hope this helps and GOOD LUCK!

I had 2 requirments for a TV Tuner Card. It had to be half-height and it had to be a dual tuner (so I can record one show and watch another). This card meets the bill. So far it has worked great. Sometimes when I tune to a channel in Windows Media Center the screen is blue and I have to change channels and then go back for it to appear. I don't know if this is because of the tuner or because of something else. Other than that I really haven't had any problems. Possibly a driver update will fix that problem.

This product works perfectly with Snap Stream Beyond TV 4. [.........]

I have 2 digital tuners and 2 analog tuners on my pc. This records multiple inputs and automatically downloads the cable TV and local TV program guide. The picture is great. The software takes some time to tweek to your inputs and program guide. You must be willing to spend some time.

I installed the tuner card into my Vista Home Premium-based PC using the disks provided.

I also added the IR blaster/receiver cable because I wanted to use the receiver portion with the provided remote.

I connected my DB2 HDTV antenna coax to the TV input and a small 50-Ohm antenna to the FM tuner input.

After installation, Media center found the driver immediately and began working.
I found all major and most minor Indianapolis ATSC stations at 4 to 5 bars of strength.
I'm 8 miles from the largest ATSC antenna cluster for the major stations, so there shouldn't have been any issues and there weren't.

I found 3 ways to install the IR receiver SW. 2 ways didn't work and 1 did.
The instructions said that if you only want to use Media center (not WinTV) AND you want to use the remote with the IR receiver cabling, then find the IR configuration SW in a special directory on the disk and double-click it.
That didn't do anything.
I also went to the web-site and downloaded the most recent installation disk image and ran the same IR configuration executable from the image - that didn't work either.

For some reason, if you go to the start menu-> programs -> Hauppauge, you will find the IR configuration tool there. I ran it from there and it worked fine.

I did have to reboot again after I ran the IR configuration tool from the menus.

Once it worked, it worked really well - just like controlling a TV except that it was controlling Media center. Pretty cool.
My wife fell in love with it immediately.

For me, the remote was worth the extra cost because we do use this PC like a TV as well as a DVR for streaming to an XBOX 360.

Yes, the streaming to the XBOX 360 worked as expected and the quality was good.

bottom-line, if you're looking for a tuner that installs easily into Vista and works well, this is it.

If you're looking to find out if every single feature of this over-featured dual-ATSC-tuner card works - my review cannot help you because I didn't test out nor do I care about all the other features such as IR blasting and FM tuning and QAM demod from a cable provider.

That said, I did try the FM tuner radio SW and it did not work.

As an aside, before I owned this tuner card, I owned the Avermedia ATSC tuner card.
it worked for 1 year and 3 months and died 1 day before the ATSC switchover here in america.
What an interesting coincidence.

I have an older Dell Dimension 8400 and the original tuner card from Dell lost one of the two tuners. I needed a replacement with dual tuners. This card fit the bill in that it tunes all the normal channels, but the HD channels only crash Media Center. I suspect this is an incompatibility with the XP Media Center, but since I didn't have those channels before I'm not too upset. I haven't invested in HD TV yet since I only subscribe to about 20 channels with Time Warner. I don't like their price tiers. I'm paying only $14/month vs. $60/month for the next tier.
The software that came in the box didn't work and I had to download the latest version from Hauppauge. Then it worked fine.
One other thing. My original Dell tuner card never showed the Closed Captioning. This card does. That could have been a codec problem, but I'm just happy it works now.