Hauppauge WinTV Tuner Card

[hdtvnewbie]

I purchased a WinTV-HVR-1250 Tuner card for my computer and it is hooked up to my WOW standard cable. My computer is a Dell Dimension 8400 with Microsoft XP Home Edition; Pentium 4 - 3.4 Ghz; 1 Gig of RAM (bought in 2005). I have an existing ATI Video Card with 128 mb.

Tuner works great except for Channels 4, 10, WOSU-HD, and 53 which I am assuming has to do with the fact that they are running at 1080i. The frame changes at slow intervals, like in the old days on the internet before broadband video.

Do I need a new video card, more memory, or a faster computer? I actually bought the card for work where I have a brand new computer, but was going to pick up another one for home (only $49.99) if this is a salvageable effort!

[MeleeDave]

I don't have any definitive answer, but my guess is that it is your graphics card. My setup is completely different, but I was experiencing the same kind of video problems on some channels.

Here's my setup:
- Dell Dimension 9200 Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz
- 2 GB RAM
- Windows Vista Ultimate
- HDHomeRun dual tuner (connected to Time Warner Cable for clear QAM HD)

My graphics card was a GeForce 7300 LE with 256 MB RAM when I was having the problems where the video would stutter. I recently bought a XFX GeForce 8600 GT Fatal1ty graphics card, which solved the problem. Video from all channels looks fantastic now. The card I bought has no fan, and is ideal for a media center PC because it is so quiet. Just be warned that it is very large and may not fit in some computer cases.

My new graphics card: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=3143304&sku=P450-8664

--Dave

[hdtvnewbie]

I made a mistake in my original specs. My video card has only 128 MB RAM, which leads me to believe that's where the problem is. Even if I don't watch much TV on the computer, I enjoy listening to the music stations WOW pipes through. Thanks.

[jchiso]

You did not mention the chipset or interface of your video card, but you will not need anything more powerful than a Radeon HD-2000 series or NVIDIA GeForce 8400 series card with 256MB of memory, so don't go crazy with the upgrade; an applicable $50 will suffice.