I like to travel and I like to watch TV. The Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950 is a convenient little $99 device that allows me to do both. Measuring about 3" x 1.25" x .5", the WinTV-HVR-950 is a portable NTSC and ATSC tuner that attaches through a USB port (2.0 and not USB 1.1) to your Windows based computer.

WinTV-HVR-950 Antenna

Plug it into your laptop and you can be watching your favorite analog and digital broadcast TV programs, even HD, no matter where you roam – as long as your reception is good. The tuner comes with a cute nubby 5" high antenna with a range of about ten miles according to Hauppauge.

Hauppauge also packages software that allows you to record the TV signal onto your computer's hard drive, making your PC a PVR, personal video recorder. And if your computer is muscular enough, you even can record HD programs.

You also can plug in a cable or satellite TV wire to the WinTV-HVR-950, but it will only tune in the analog channels. As the reference material states, "The WinTV-HVR-950 cannot receive digital cable TV or digital satellite TV."

Since the tuner is relying on your computer to decode ATSC digital signals, Hauppauge recommends minimum system specifications. "Typically a 2.2 GHz Pentium 4 processor or equivalent with a graphics card having 64 MBytes of memory is required to properly decode ATSC digital TV on your PC."

The tuner also requires that your PC be running Windows XP, XP Pro, XP Media Center Edition, with Service Pack 2, or Vista.

NBC News in HD through the WinTV-HVR-950 shown on Windows Media Center

Out of the Box
The box contains the tuner, which Hauppauge dubs the "hybrid TV stick," and the antenna, which is attached to a 5' cord that plugs into the stick. Also included is a 1' USB extender cable that gives you a bit of breathing room around your computer's USB ports.

For $16.95, you can order from Hauppauge their A/V Cable Set and remote control. The A/V cable provides S-Video and stereo audio inputs, which allow you to connect directly to a VCR, camcorder or cable TV box. The other end of the A/V cable plugs into a little slot on the side of the tuner. With this hook-up, you are funneling the signal directly into your computer and you do not have the ability to tune channels. If you wanted to change channels you would do it with your VCR or cable box.

The remote control works in conjunction with the built-in remote control features in the WinTV-HVR-950 software. We did not receive the A/V Cable Set and remote control with our review unit, so we cannot comment on them.

The software CD includes the WinTV programs and decoders that allow you to tune channels, schedule TV shows, and record to your hard drive. Also, if you wish, you can drop an icon on to your desktop that links directly to the TitanTV website.

The box also contains a two page QuickStart guide but no manual. The CD has a manual but it is for the HVR-900, which is the British version. I have tried in vain to locate a HVR-950 manual. The British manual is helpful, but there are enough differences between the broadcast TV system in England and the U.S. that I would really prefer to have a 950 specific document.

Setup
Even without a manual, setup is fairly straightforward, especially if you have installed devices like this before. The CD and QuickStart guide walk you through the steps of installing the drivers and software.

After that, attach the antenna to the HVR-950 and plug the stick into a USB2.0 port. Click on the WinTV icon and you're ready to Scan for all the available analog and digital channels floating around. The scanning process takes about 10 minutes for all the channels.

WinTV Channel Manager Scan Results

If you are too far away from the TV stations' transmitting antennas or are blocked by big buildings, you may need to resort to a more powerful external antenna. If you're really serious about good reception that might mean an outdoor mounted one. I would suggest beginning with the antenna that Hauppauge provides. It's surprising how well it does.

Sitting in LAX, I was able to tune in ten analog stations and 36 digital ones including channels with enticing labels like Fun, The Tube, Raw News, Worship, qubo, and IONLife. Considering we were located in the middle of the terminal at a gate with no windows, the tiny 5" antenna performed better than I would imagine. Though, on this particular Saturday afternoon, I also never dreamed that so many channels could all be simultaneously blasting used car ads featuring buxom barkers.

Performance
Whether you are in the airport or in your office, the goal of a tuner like this is a clear picture and smooth playback. The two obstacles are bad reception and a puny computer.

Bad Analog Reception

If you are too young to remember the travails of antenna reception, the WinTV-HVR-950 will give you a crash course in the vagaries of antenna placement and TV tuning. But before you start attaching aluminum foil to your ears, I would recommend that you employ a computer with a brawny processor and a dedicated graphics card, especially if you plan to watch ATSC digital channels.

Digital reception was consistently better than analog.

On the road, I was using a Dell Latitude with an Intel Core Duo processor and playback was often spotty. For example, in the LA airport, the HD broadcast of the golf tournament looked great except the audio stuttered and the video sputtered. Considering that golf is not a fast action sport, I was able to keep up. Though there was added drama when someone putted and then the video ground to a halt before the ball made it to the hole. All in all, not a totally satisfactory experience.

The question arises then, what is causing the problem? Though Hauppauge warns about the difficulty of decoding ATSC digital signals with a wimpy computer, my experience often points to bad reception.

As evidence, let's move on to San Francisco and my trials at a friend's house in Bernal Heights. After rescanning for Bay area stations from the kitchen table, I pulled in 15 analog and 12 digital channels. (My rough survey of weekday afternoon TV can be summarized as hair loss, hair replacement and hair straighteners, Spanish Jerry Springers, discount furniture, and multiple TV Courts.)

"Gimme a head with hair, long beautiful hair."

The most telling channel in my reception vs. computer quandary was KTSF D1. On this digital channel, the audio came in clear and smooth and the video was clean and even. The lecture by the Japanese monk in the peach and salmon colored kimono was almost flawless, even at full screen. Now, many of the other channels did not perform as well. Which leads me to conclude that, in this case, bad playback was a reception issue and not a computer shortcoming.

Also, you can adjust the TV screen size from 320 x 240 to full screen (in my case 1280 x 768). If jerky playback was computer related, then my logic would say that a smaller screen size would help. Usually, that didn't solve the problem.

As a final test, I hooked the HVR-950 directly to the Comcast cable, set the source to cable and re-scanned. I received 80 analog channels, numbered 2 to 81. They were not named or identified by call letters. When scanning for digital channels, it did not find any, which confirms what Hauppauge says. As you can imagine, reception and playback were fine. Of course, this setup begs the question, why not just hook up a TV? In most cases, that would be the more sensible solution. Though I'm sure there are times when that isn't possible.

About recording on to your computer's hard drive, the first thing you should know is that one hour of recording analog TV takes about 2.8 Gbytes. And if you plan to record 1080i programs, then allot twice that amount. As you can see, you can eat through a hard drive fairly quickly if you start recording every HD episode of the Young and the Restless.

And remember the old adage, GIGO, (garbage in, garbage out). If your reception is bad, what you record will look bad when you play it back.

With that said, recording can be a one button operation from the WinTV interface or you can use the WinTV-Scheduler to tell your computer to start recording a channel at a specific time, much like an old VCR.

WinTV-Scheduler

Also, if you are running Windows Media Center, you can use that much more elegant interface to download your local TV programming schedule and then prompt your computer to start recording a specific program that you choose from the schedule. I much preferred the Windows Media Center option.

Windows Media Center Guide

I can foresee where some people with large hard drives and good reception could start using the WinTV-HVR-950 as a component in a computer-centric media center. Probably a more compact and powerful solution would be Hauppauge's WinTV-HVR-1600, which is a two tuner card that plugs directly into a slot on your motherboard.