TV card option

Hello,
I'm considering an $130 option for the TV tuner card setup offered thru HP on a DV6500.

Is an HP card the best option for TV tuning or are there 3rd party brands that are better and/or less expensive..?

Thanks

da thrill..

 

The HP card is very good. I have had all three versions...the analog, later replaced by the first digital version, and later replaced by the second digital version.

The analog card came with the first dv models. It did analog tv and analog over-the-ar.
The first version digital card was analog tuner + ATSC.
The second version digital card is analog tuner + ATSC/QAM, and I'd guess comes with ALL new dv models.

They all come with:
-tuner card for ExpressCard54 slot
-USB IR sensor, with infrared cable extension for controlling set tob boxes
-MCE supported remote which works only with the USB IR sensor
-driver cd
-a cable which connects to the card which splits out to Red/White/Yellow rca and svideo. Both connections are for external video in, like XBox or the sort.
-minicoax cable which is required to view tv

The first digital version came with a red/white rca extension cable.
Both digital versions come with a mini-antenna with its own built in minicoax plug. The antenna is a flexible, extendible single rabbit ear with a suction cup on the bottom for sticking on a wall.



Since the second digital version is probably all you can get now, I will just go into depth about this.

Two things about this tuner (and all HP tuners available to buy) which you will not read anywhere. When I had the analog version, before HP replaced it, i was looking to buy the card from CircuitCity, trying to find out these two bits of information, information neither CircuitCity.com knew, HP tech support knew, or any place on the web knew...
1) whether it supports HDTV
2) whether it supports Media Center in Windows XP

All you will see on the web is that its a digital card that works only in Vista Media Center. After testing, 1) it gets HDTV signals fine...720p, 1080i, etc. and 2) I tested this on XP Media Center and it worked perfectly fine, able to get both analog and digital signals.


I was looking around to see if it is any cheaper from online resellers. I know CircuitCity sells it normally for $160, but now $140 i guess because of the holidays. The problem is that you cant guarantee that the online resellers will sell you the QAM supported model.
If you call HP (like I did) and ask them about the difference between the models, they will just say they are the same since the drivers work on both. The problem is that they are NOT the same.

The first version is model# 438587-001 Revision C.
The second version is model# 438587-002 Revision A.

Model 438587-001 Revision C is device CX885.M7717, which is an HP rebranded Hauppauge HVR-1500 device CX885.M7710, which supports NTSC/ATSC.
Model 438587-002 Revision A is device CX885.M7797, which is an HP rebranded Hauppauge HVR-1500 device CX885.M7790, which supports NTSC/ATSC/QAM.

I would have never investigated this had the second version digital tuner package not had a big yellow sticker on the front which said "New and Improved".



So anyway...
The card (like all previous cards) gets really hot after short or long use.
The card (like all previous cards) has an indicator light on it (the analog card has a pink light, and the digital card has a teal light).
When switching between analog and digital signals there is about a 15 second delay.
The card works perfectly fine with Hauppauge WinTV6 (since the card is a rebranded Hauppauge card).
Hauppauge does not support the card. All support is covered by HP.

Here is a short list of programs I have found that work fine ATSC component of the card:
-XP Media Center
-Vista Media Center
-WinTV6
-WatchHDTV

Im still trying to figure out how to use Windows Media Encoder and VLC to stream the ATSC component over the internet. They both dont seem to detect a signal from the ATSC component, only the NTSC analog component. (Then again this might be due to the fact that the tuning software in these programs, because of their age, arent equipped to read ATSC).


In short:
is it a nice card? Yes.
does it have its negatives? Yes, it gets hot, there is a delay when changing between NTSC and ATSC, Hauppauge does not support the card, and unless you manually installed the WinTV drivers/software you would never know it existed or worked with the card.
is it worth $130? well considering it has the analog component already built into the card (which makes it work fine with Media Center) I think so. I have read that if you buy one of those $40 USB HDTV sticks, you still need an analog tv tuner to get Media Center to recognize the HDTV stick. For what you get with the card (the remote + IR sensor, a mini-antenna, and external video in cables), its a really good deal. Those HDTV USB sticks probably dont come with the ability to do video-in, so this card is really good if you want to use your XBox, PlayStation or Wii on your HP laptop.

Then again, I haven't found many other products which are ExpressCard54 tuners. So I just dont know if anything else out there exists. I read a while back that AverMedia would make an expresscard tv tuner. Not sure what came of that.



Edit: Looks like the AverMedia card is available:
Avermedia AVerTV Hybrid ExpressCard (HC80) - ExpressCard - ATSC, NTSC - http://www.compsource.com/pn/MTVHBE80R/Avermedia_54/

From what I see, everything seems to be the same as the HP card except that:
1) the AverMedia card does FM tuning, and has a separate input for it
2) I dont see any information which says the AverMedia card does QAM
3) The remote isnt a standard MCE remote. Its not pictured on that page, but the DVT-B model of this card does not have an MCE standard remote, so I doubt this unit does either.
4) No standalone antenna


I forgot to mention that you can get the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1500 card. It is the exact same card as the HP card, just Hauppauge branded.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116025 - same price as the HP card with guarantee of receiving a QAM model.


So it looks like your choices (for ExpressCard54 tv tuners are):
HP Analog/Digital TV tuner @ $130
Hauppauge HVR-1500 @ $130 (same unit as the HP)
AverMedia HC80 @ $120, no QAM, junkier remote, but does FM tuning

 

The TV Tuner card has very good quality bascly it looks like this . However if you use the ATSC Antenna dont move it around allot cause it will loose signal quality but in terms of picture and sound its very good

 

thanks to both for the extensive info

 

have you guys tried hooking up the tvtuner to a game system? is there any lag when you tried playing a game? i'm trying to find a good tv tuner that can play console games as well.

thanks for the post btw, it was really useful and theres barely any review/information on express tuners out there.

 

No, i dont have any game systems worth testing (i have an N64).

 

I have the first analog version. Gaming won't work. These tuners all require Media Center (in Vista and XP). As such, theres a 2 (or more) second delay added to the picture.

If you can find a way to get software like Dscaler to run on these cards, you'd be many peoples personal hero. But since they have hardware encoding (picture gets decoded then re-encoded on the fly on the card), you'd have to find a way to disable that and then use software that can get the real-time delay free image.

 

I must have the "before the first model", which is Model 438587-001 Revision B
My tuner now will no longer allow me to use my analog cable and I don't have digital, so anyone know what is the deal?

I have installed this update from HP:

HP Digital/Analog TV Tuner Driver Software
11-2007 5.0 A » sp36460.exe

 

you can get it on ebay for cheaper brand new...

here

(thats not me saling it, i was going to get one too, so i though i would let you kno...)

 

Hey everyone, I fixed my problem by following these instructions. Maybe this will help someone else.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=202197&highlight=sp36460.exe

 

hmm...

mbmalone, can you check some stuff for me? Id like to know what is the difference between your model and Revision C.

1) install winrar if you dont already have it.
2) get your driver cd that came with the tv tuner. find the EXE driver installer on the cd. Right click the EXE and click extract files (it will pop up a window. Select where you want to extract. A folder on the desktop is fine). Windows will popup asking if you want to replace already existing files. Just click rename all.
3) after it extracts, goto the folder and open the file hcw85bda.inf.
4) do a CTRL-F (find text) and search for the text "HP" (no quotes).

It should turn up a line that starts "CX885.M7717...."

Just copy and paste every line which has HP Digital/Analog TV Tuner, and every line which says Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1500.

This is what my file has:
CX885.M7710 = "Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1500 (Model 77xxx, Hybrid ATSC)"
CX885.M7717 = "HP Digital/Analog TV Tuner"
CX885.M7790 = "Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1500 (Model 77xxx, Hybrid ATSC/QAM)"
CX885.M7797 = "HP Digital/Analog TV Tuner"

 

I don't have the installation CD, but this is what came up in the search I ran on the files I used to install.
Everything is working correctly, as far as I can tell.

CX885.M7717 = "HP Digital/Analog TV Tuner"
CX885.M7797 = "HP Digital/Analog TV Tuner"

 

oh ok thanks for the info, i guess there still isn't a good quality tuner that can run a game console i brought a gamebridge tv adapter a while back, but the image quality is pretty crappy and theres a good split second delay (not that noticeable but i'm picky)

 

@mbmalone:

Hmm...

Can you use the following guide I made to install WinTV, then upload a picture of what the device tab shows in WinTV: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=202197

 

I suppose I can try my N64 and tell you how it works out...

I guess considering a PS3/XB360/Wii is a device which responds to user input and the fact that the tv tuner isnt a pure tv, and thus requires encoding, there will logically be graphics-lag problems unless the device is suited for 0-lag gaming...

 

Update: I purchased one of the HP Express cards and installed with drivers on my laptop (HP dv6000t). I let it scan for channels and was disappointed that it only found a few analog channels with relatively poor reception. I assumed it was just due to poor reception in my area. Then I found and read through this post and followed the steps to install WinTV. Wow! It found about 25-30 new channels including several digital and HD channels and the video picture is fantastic!! (Even with the included antenna). I have not been able to figure out why Media Center can't find these channels, but it doesn't really matter because I'll be using WinTV anyway. I'm still working getting the remote to work. It won't work with WMC or WinTV, but I think it may have something to do with my laptop having XP instead of Vista.

Just wanted to post back to let people know WinTV works really well with this HP card. If you're getting poor results running with WMC, try installing the WinTV drivers.