Answering my own question, it looks like, yes, you can record two of whatever you want. 2 analog, or 2 digital/qam simultaneously. I just wish I had more than one PCI express slot now :(

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Foxer

Installed and setup the HVR-2250 in my HTPC. This is the first time I have setup a tuner card in a HTPC. This card seems to works great! Analog picture quality is very good. Took a little bit of work, and quite a bit of reading on the forum, but I was able to get clear qam channels with it. HD quality is very good. My card came with the low profile plate for the card, which I needed, but I find it odd that they did make the extra input plate for component in with the capability to be low profile also.

I've had the card for a few days now so I'm gonna give it my review. As a background I'm ocmparing this to multiple other cards I've owned. This installed easy and I was able to get the qam patch to work (kinda).
Pros:

• 2 NTSC/ATSC/qam tuners on a half height board with built in splitter.
• 2 built-in mpeg encoders to take the load off the cpu

Cons:

• 2 NTSC/ATSC/qam tuners on a half height board with built in splitter. (If you have multiple sources from different feeds, you're screwed.)
• Only comes as MCE kit (nice if you need the stuff, but I would have loved the option to just get the card and save a little money. I have 4 remotes for my computer now, who the hell needs 4 remotes???)
• No improvement in quality of video that i noticed over previous cards. (I know this is probably a media center thing, but some sort of plug-in would be nice)
• Same horrible software thats packaged witht he rest of their cards.

Overall:
This is a great card if its your first tuner or are limited on space. the built in encoders dont offer much of a performance boost (it may be more on a low end system, but a HTPC shouldn't be a low end system). I might have had too high of expectations because this card is coming out 5 months late and was hyped up all the while, but it turned out to be kind of a dissapointment for me. I already had a Hvr1250 in my system so I could have gotten the exact same results out of spending another 50 bucks on another 1250 and saved myself the 100 bucks and 5 months waiting. All in all: If this is your first tuner card by all menas buy it, but if you have something thats already working for you, dont expect this thing to wow you.

Has anyone gotten Clear QAM to work with this card? The beta plugin found 51 channels, but none were displayable. WinTV found 51 channels, but none were displayable, though it did play audio for one channel, a weather channel. TSReader Lite displayed static images for the handful of these QAM channels that are actually in the clear, but it isn't a real player.

 

 

One thing that everyone should remember about this card is its purpose -- It's not designed to handle both ATSC and NTSC at the same time.

It's whole purpose is to provide either two NTSC tuners (and replace the pvr-500/provide a pci-e "version" of the pvr-500), or provide two ATSC tuners on the same card. It was originally going to be the first card to have two atsc tuners on the same card. At the time of the press release, no one else had that -- however, I think Hauppauge missed the boat by delaying this so long and allowed the competition to catch up.

I'm interested to know how the reception is for OTA HD broadcasts? How does it compete to some to the atsc tuners found built-in to lcd tv's?

 

 

 

 

 

notyouraccount:

I'm interested to know how the reception is for OTA HD broadcasts? How does it compete to some to the atsc tuners found built-in to lcd tv's?

I have no way to compare it to LCD TVs, but the 2250's ATSC reception is at least as good as the 1600, 1800, and 950 USB stick. That is, I'm getting the same channels on the 2250 just as well as I ever did with those tuners, i.e. just fine for the most part. I'm just tired of the occasional antenna glitchiness (weather, local station incompetence, etc), and I hope to get Clear QAM working. So far, no luck on that front. :(

 

I got the clear qam to work with only a few minor issues. When I set both tuners to receive qam, all the channels i have came in fine (once I mapped them my self because the microsoft guide had a few extra channels from far away and was missing channels I had). But once I switched 1 tuner to qam and 1 tuner to receive regular channels then some of the qam channels stopped working. This is kinda frustrating because theyre channels I know I have and I didnt change any guide data, I just pulled 1 tuner to get regular cable.

Millerbm -

Have you contatced Tech Support regarding this issue? Can anyone else with this card reproduce this issue?

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My VMC setup:
(2) Xbox360s
Dell XPS410 (2.6Ghz C2D, 2GB Ram,Nvidia 8600GT, Blu-ray internal, HD-DVD external (X360 drive), (2) Vboxx DTA150s (OTA HD), 1 HVR-1150 (OTA HD) and Dish Network

millerbm:

I got the clear qam to work with only a few minor issues. When I set both tuners to receive qam, all the channels i have came in fine (once I mapped them my self because the microsoft guide had a few extra channels from far away and was missing channels I had). But once I switched 1 tuner to qam and 1 tuner to receive regular channels then some of the qam channels stopped working. This is kinda frustrating because theyre channels I know I have and I didnt change any guide data, I just pulled 1 tuner to get regular cable.

How did you map them yourself?

 

Good to hear. I have a HVR-1800 and it's just about on par with the internal ATSC tuner of my 2008 model Toshiba LCD. I occasionally have a stronger signal from the tv -- not that it actually makes any noticable difference though. From what I understand, Samsung and Toshiba have the best built-in tuners, so that's a plus.

Thanks

tims029334:

millerbm:

I got the clear qam to work with only a few minor issues. When I set both tuners to receive qam, all the channels i have came in fine (once I mapped them my self because the microsoft guide had a few extra channels from far away and was missing channels I had). But once I switched 1 tuner to qam and 1 tuner to receive regular channels then some of the qam channels stopped working. This is kinda frustrating because theyre channels I know I have and I didnt change any guide data, I just pulled 1 tuner to get regular cable.

How did you map them yourself?

 

You go to the add missing channels part and add the the channel by its ota number. To get guide listings for it you also have to name the channel the exact same as their official thing (check titantv.com for channel names). all in all i hate using the plugin because even though i got it to work its still very buggy, but its better than nothing.

I've had no luck getting any of the Clear QAM cable channels to come in using WinTV.   I'm usually pretty good figuring these things out, but it's either not working for some reason or i'm just doing it all wrong the past few days.

Any suggestions on proper procedure?

 

 

i ordered this and installed it today.  works just fine for regular cable channels through my digital comcast box.  way more channels found than i ever knew i had before when using the guide in media center.

still no luck getting clear qam channels, but that's because i have no idea how.  please share any info on this patch that i've read about in this thread and about how i can swtich between watching my cable channels on regular tv and hd channels that come through on clear qam.

this is my first ever tv tuner, but i built my newest rig about six weeks ago to do gaming and hdtv and i need to get hdtv on here through media center like this guy

(can't seem to get a link to appear, so...http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2320616,00.asp)

before my wife gets more mad about me buying the gateway xhd3000 for this exact purpose.

I don't really know how to explain the proper procedure. I just followed the guide and it worked. I guess I just got lucky. It did take a little tweaking to get a couple missing channels.
List of things to troubleshoot:
 1.Make sure your cable provider broadcasts in qam (i know the majority do, but im sure there may still be a couple that dont)
2. Make sure the channels listed on the guide match up to ones you get from the cable company (this is where i had the most issues, the guide had channels from stations from over a 3 hour drive away when i only live 1 hour from a major market)
3. scan with the winTV program to see if it detects qam channels (mine read like 50 something qam channels but could only display the 9 or 10 local channels (which is common)) <-- parentheses  inside parentheses?? yeah, i did it
4. Make sure you have all the wintv apps and drivers installed (yeah i know this should be before #3 but oh well)
5.When scanning for qam channels make sure the HRC thing is set to the proper setting. I dont really know how to find out what the proper setting is so sorry about that but for my cable provider, COMCAST, I HAD TO SWITCH HRC CABLE TO Y (which isn't the default).



To get both qam and regular cable to show up:
1.Set up both tuners to receive the qam channels as listed in the qam patch guide
2. go to tv settings again and go to set up tv signal
3. choose your region and hit next (im assuming everyone is in the US)
4. when it asks you to choose source, hit antenna like you would to set up the clear qam channels and do digital antenna.
5. When it asks you if you have any other sources connected hit yes then choose cable
6. if it asks about a stb hit no, then on the next page choose your cable provider
7. when it asks how many tuners you want to set up CHOOSE ONLY 1
8. once everything finishes go back and run the qam plugin utility and scan for qam channels and reset

I hope this little guide helps, if anyone needs a step by step guide thats a little more detailed let me know. Thanks!

this help for anyone??? let me know, im kinda curious