ClearQAM Hauppauge 950Q Recording 2

Posted by JD 09/19/2009 at 20:09

A few months ago, I purchased a Hauppauge 950Q ATSC/ClearQAM USB HiDef recording dohicky. The play was to create a TiVo replacement.

Plans don’t always work out.

Hardware

The Hauppauge 950Q is a TV tuner for over the air HD broadcast TV and a ClearQAM digital cable recorder. It is like a big USB Flash drive in size. So far, I’ve only gotten it to work with either OTA or ClearQAM settings. Switching between these modes appears to require a complete re-configuration of the driver software. It must be connected to a computer to work.

For some unknown reason, the device doesn’t always work. It could be related to my VirtualBox USB settings. I think the trick is to start the Hauppauge software before any VirtualBox VM grabs the USB device. I dunno.

Software

Hauppauge includes Windows software. The provided software isn’t very good, but it does work. Scheduling future recordings is like an old VCR interface except it feels there’s a 90% chance it won’t work. Yo need to set the start-time a minute before a program or you will miss the first minute due to software startup time.

Windows Media Center (Vista-64 version) doesn’t work with ClearQAM devices. I’ve heard there is a fix for $200 from MS.

GB-PVR, another full PVR solution, doesn’t seem to be able to change channels or otherwise control the tuner. Perhaps someone else will solve the issue. Generally, I like this media player and just wish it worked as a media recorder for my device too.

Schedule Data

This is the main issue. Once you have a TiVo you are addicted to scheduling that just follows the TV show to whatever time and channel, and records it. Set it once and it just works. Last time I checked, there was no viable channel lineup manager for ClearQAM. BeyondTV and TitanTV may provide similar capabilities for PC-based PVRs. I dunno.

Recorded File Sized

HiDef content takes a lot of storage in the recorded format. The 950Q records into MPEG2 format, so every hour is about 8GB of storage. 80GB is only 10 hours. Ouch.

Transcoding

I’ve standardized on xvid mpeg4 avi containers for my video collection. The main reasons for this are that xvid:

  1. is open source
  2. avi is a container that every playback device I own supports (N800, MediaGate, Linux and Windows PCs)
  3. I know it well, since using it for the last 8+ years
  4. Supports HiDef content
  5. Can easily be transcoded to alternate video resolutions.

Transcoding hidef content into mpeg4/xvid should reduce the file from 8GB/hr to about 2-3GB/hr with little impact in quality. At DVD resolutions, 700KB/hr is common. This is good and will playback on a non-hidef player, like a MediaGate MG35.

Next, what is the final solution for good, simple PVR and the 950Q? Watch here.

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  1. JD 09/17/2009 at 10:19

    So, what happened to the rest of the article? Did the blog system upgrade eat it?

  2. JD 09/20/2009 at 22:16

    There’s a new version of WinTV – v7. It feels like a better implementation, but it does crash after about a day. The scheduler also crashes, but you aren’t notified about it until the start of a program you’d like to record.

    My system with this device/software is Vista-64, so that could be the issue. The package/software specifically says it supports Vista-64. Additionally, I try to never install anything on it – no .Net libraries, no funny codec-paks, nothing but VirtualBox. This system is for VirtualMachines and running other, more interesting operating systems.

    The resulting recordings are very nice. Better than the TiVo or other capture cards that I’ve used. That is, until you try to play them on other systems. The default output format is .ts. I think it is a modified MPEG2 file, but my normal mpg2 tools are having a few issues. Streams need to be “fixed”, but can’t. Jumping withing the files causes mplayer, mencoder, avidemux, and VideoRedoPlus to crash. The WinTV player will also crash unless the machine was rebooted within the last 24 hours.

    There is an option to automatically convert the .ts files into .mpg files. That process crashed the entire system yesterday, taking down 2 running virtual machines with it. Boo, Hauppauge, boo.

    A TiVo-HD is looking like a bargain to me at this point. Glad I only spent $46 on this.