• Microsoft® Windows® 10, 8 and 7, Windows Vista, either 32-bit or 64-bit versions
• Windows XP, Windows XP Pro or Windows XP Media Center Edition, with Service Pack 2 ( or greater.)

Yes, the WinTV-HVR-955Q can be used with Windows Media Center in Windows 8, 7, Vista and with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

To use the WinTV-HVR-955Q with Windows Media Center, download and install the Windows Media Center driver installation package, which will install the WinTV-HVR-955Q Windows driver and the Hauppauge MCE Soft Encoder.

Note: Under Windows 7, the Hauppauge MCE Soft Encoder is pre-installed as part of Windows 7. Therefore, you can skip the installation of the MCE Soft Encoder and simply install the WinTV-HVR-950Q Windows driver.

Note: under Windows Media Center, you will only be able to configure WinTV-HVR-955Q as either an Digital tuner or an Analog tuner. You will not be able to switch between Digital and Analog channels.

NTSC Analog CableTV or over-the-air analog TV: You can use your cable TV from the wall to connect to the WinTV-HVR-950Q and receive all of your basic Cable TV channels. You can also use a roof top antenna to receive "over-the-air" TV.

Note: After June 2009, most areas in the United States no longer broadcast over-the-air analog signals.

ATSC over-the-air digital TV: Supports all ATSC formats, up to the high definition 1080i format!
Note: For ATSC digital TV, a rooftop/out door antenna is recommended for optimal results/signal strength.

ClearQAM cable TV Channels: Clear QAM digital cable TV channels are unencrypted digital cable TV channels. Clear QAM allows users to watch unencrypted digital TV channels from their cable TV provider without a set-top box.
Note: WinTV v8, WinTV v7 or Microsoft Windows 7 is required for clear QAM reception
Note: Check your local cable TV provider for clear QAM reception over your cable TV network.

No. The WinTV-HVR-955Q has an ATSC over-the-air digital TV tuner built-in and supports all ATSC formats, up to the high definition 1080i format . The WinTV-HVR-950Q will support ATSC broadcasts that are currently being transmitted over-the-air. It will not be able to decode HD broadcasts that come through your cable or satellite box. The WinTV-HVR-955Q also supports clear QAM cable TV channels through your direct cable TV line if available from your cable TV provider.

Using the WinTV 7 or WinTV v8 application, the WinTV-HVR-955Q will record in a transport stream (TS)
For ATSC and Clear QAM digital TV recordings, the recording format and bit rate is exactly the same as the broadcast format (i.e. ATSC 1080i is recorded at 1080i).
For NTSC analog cable TV recordings, our SoftPVR is used to create Transport Stream files (TS)

Note: TS files can be converted to MPEG files using options in the WinTV 7 configuration menu.

Note: The WinTV 6 application recording are in MPEG format for both digital and analog.

Note: Not all recordings made with ATSC/QAM signals are DVD compliant.

No. The WinTV-HVR-955Q will only be able to record the program that is being viewed using the WinTV v8 application. But the Hauppauge WinTV v8 application allows up to 4 WinTV-HVR-955Q's to be used in one system at a time.

If you are watching a digital TV channel and you see choppy video, no audio or a black screen, then it is possible your PC is not fast enough to decode and play the digital TV channel you are watching. Please verify that your system meets the minimum requirements for using the HVR-950Q

Digital TV, especially ATSC high definition digital TV, is very CPU intensive. Many graphics cards have special built-in hardware to speed up decoding of high definition TV channels.

On graphics cards without special video decoding features, you can often improve the playback performance by using the Video Renderer settings located in the settings menu of WinTV 7. To open the setting menu click on the “gear” button located in the lower left of the WinTV 7 screen.

The default mode is EVR. The other modes are VMR9, VMR7 and Overlay. Each mode uses a different process to render video. Try each mode and use the one which gives you the best results. To use hardware acceleration put a check in the box “use hardware acceleration when possible. This will allow your graphics system to use hardware acceleration for video decode. Note: graphics hardware acceleration does not work on all systems. After making a change in video rendering settings Wintv must be restarted to take effect.

If you are using WinTV 6 then the render options are part of a separate program called Primary.  Changes in the Primary applet must be made with the WinTV application closed.  Open the Primary program by going to Start – All Programs – Hauppauge WinTV – Primary.  After making changes close the Primary applet and open the WinTV application.

The IR software should be installed by default. To check look for a small remote control icon in the Windows task bar on the lower right. IF it is not present you can reinstall Wintv from the installation CDROM or download IR32.EXE from our support web site. The remote control must also have “line of sight” with the HVR-950Q.  The IR receiver of the HVR-950Q is the round bulb on the side of the unit.

Microsoft has released Windows Media Center patches for the "Low bit rate" error message.
Click to view the information from Microsoft.

In order to fix this issue, please check that your Power Options setting is not set to ‘Power Saver’. Please change it to ‘Balance’ or ‘High Performance’.

To change these settings on Windows 7, please do the following.

Click on Start and then Control Panel.

If Control Panel is set to View by: Category then click on ‘System and Security’ and then ‘Power Options’.

If Control Panel is set to View by: Large or Small icons then click on ‘Power Options’.

If you do not see Balanced or High Performance please click on the option for ‘Show additional plans’.

Once you make the change please restart your system. When the system restarts please rescan again for channels.

Digital Broadcasts (ATSC or QAM)

The file size of a digital signal capture depends on the bitrate of the digital signal.  The bitrate is set by the broadcaster and cannot be user configured.  Bitrates for digital signals can range anywhere from about 1.2 Mbits/sec up to 19.3 Mbits/sec.  Most of the time these bitrates are variable and not constant.  Capture sizes for ATSC & QAM recordings are approximately 1.7 Gigabytes per hour up to 8.3 Gigabytes per hour.

Analog Broadcast.

The WinTV application has to convert analog signals to digital in order to record. There are four recording profiles. The following list shows recording file sizes for burning to 4.3Gb DVD:

Best - Approx 1 Hour+
Better - Approx 1 1/2 Hours
Good - Approx 2 Hours
Fair - Approx 3 Hours

This can be caused by a corrupt Channel database so you will need to uninstall and reinstall.  First you need to go to start, all programs, Hauppauge Wintv and in that folder run
“uninstall Wintv7” (or remove Wintv7 using control panel "add/remove programs) then you need to remove the backup channel database.

Windows Vista, 7 and 8 go to C:\program data ( this folder is a hidden folder so if you do not see it you need to “show hidden folders “ in your search
Options)  once you can get to this folder you will see a folder label “Hauppauge”  delete this folder.

Windows XP go to C:\documents and settings\all users\shared documents\application data ( this folder is a hidden folder so if you do not see it you need to “show hidden folders “ in your search Options)  once you can get to this folder you will see a folder label “Hauppauge”  delete this folder.

Then download the latest version of Wintv7 located in the support section of the website and reinstall (note: you must have your original CD to validate the download.)

This appears to be a bug in windows 64 bit OS. Our drivers are signed.

"Windows cannot verify the digital signature for the drivers required for this device. A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged, or that might be malicious software from an unknown source. (Code 52)"

The following is probably the easiest fix to Error Code 52 on Windows 7 or Windows 8 64bit.

In device manager right click the Hauppauge product under Sound Video and Game Controllers with the exclamation mark and select Uninstall. If you have a USB product you might multiple listings, please right click the first one on the list.

For this example we will use the HVR-950Q.

On the Confirm window please check the box for "Delete the driver software for this device" and click OK.

Repeat the uninstall for the other two 950Q entries. (note you won't be asked to 'confirm device uninstall' again).

Once the drivers are gone on right click on "Sound, Video Game Controllers" and "Scan for Hardware Changes".

Windows should now look online automatically for the 950Q drivers.

Take a look after a few minutes if the drivers are installed automatically properly under Sound Video and Game Controllers.

If they still come back as "unsigned" try the procedure again.