Everyone should know that the HVR1600 DOES NOT work on Clear Qam no matter what Hauppauge claims. I spent 3 weeks trying about everything possible and here are the results.
It won’t display digital clear Qam channels without jerkiness in the video and audio. It sometimes manages the HD channels, but not often. It won’t record any of them either manually or scheduled. If you pre-schedule a recording of a Clear qam channel, you get no video in the recording, only audio. If you record manually while watching, you get only snow. Those results were with the suppled latest Hauppauge drivers and applications on their website.
Also, contrary to what their website claims, BeyondTV does not even recognize the digital tuner on the HVR1600. And for the record it allows you to tune the analog tuner with the same garbage quality that I came to expect from my PVR150.
Also, contrary to what their website claims, SageTV wont tune both tuners at the same time. You can only do them one at a time and never together. Also if you have anything less than 100 percent signal, Sage will not tune the digital channels at all period.
So there is no combination of drivers and applications that currently work with the HVR1600 on Clear Qam unless you want to just use the analog tuner and those channels. That works OK, just like the PVR150 only worked OK. Nothing more.
I would not have bothered with this except the Hauppauge technical people refuse to fix this and their sales people lied to me about the card and software in a pre-sales discussion. Now they refuse to RMA or refund or fix the software or even return my phone calls to tech support or sales. In short, they have failed completely on the HVR1600. So in return for their failure, I promised them I’d tell the world about it.
For the record I have sufficient hardware and that is not the issue. I think a dual core presler and 2gb of ddr2 800mhz with an nvidia 6600gt 128mb (also tried a 7800gt) on an evga 650i is probably enough to meet the minimal configuration requirements.
Have a nice day and don’t buy the HVR1600 .
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