In WinTV v8, right click your mouse in the live TV window, and go to Help. You will see our online manual.
You can also find the manual on our website in the Support -> WinTV v8 under the Manuals tab.
In order to upgrade to WinTV v8.5, you must have your WinTV v8 Activation Code. If you do not have an Activation Code , but you have a WinTV v7 CD, you can install the WinTV v8 application (look in the Support -> WinTV 8 Download tab).
If you do not have either a WinTV v8 Activation Code or your original WinTV v7 CD-ROM, you can purchase a new WinTV v8 Activation Code on the Hauppauge webstore for $9.95. The WinTV v8 Activation Code can then be used to activate WinTV v8.5
In WinTV v8, click on the setting button (Gear) in the lower left of the application. Then click on the
Devices tab and highlight your WinTV device and click
Tuner Setup (see the first picture below).
In the Device Setup Wizard, you will see a list of TV formats which your Hauppauge TV tuner can support. Depending upon which Hauppauge tuner you have, you will have a choice of analog, digital or external inputs (see the second picture below). You can also select all formats and let the WinTV application show you what it finds in each format (if anything).
Click Next and Next and let WinTV scan for channels. The results should look like picture 3 below.
Settings -> Devices
click to enlarge
Device Setup Wizard
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Scan Complete
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Buffering and no TV video can be caused by a few things:
- If there is a problem with your TV signal. Check your antenna or coax cable going to the Hauppauge product.
- If your anti virus software is preventing the WinTV application from making a temporary video buffer. If this is the case, you'll need to either disable the anti-virus software or create an exception for the WinTV application in your anti-virus exception list.
- If you using a cable TV or satellite box, make sure the box is turned on.
If you see channels during the scan, but no channels are listed in WinTV channel list (to see the channel list, right click your mouse on the live TV window, then select Find Channel), then something went wrong in the WinTV TV channel database.
Solution:
- Uninstall WinTV completely: go to start/control panel/ and look for Program and feature and uninstall Hauppauge WinTV.
- After that please restart the computer.
- When the system comes back up please browse to the following folders and if you see a WinTV folder, delete the folder.
- C:\Users\Public\
- C:\Program Files or Program Files (x86)\
- Also please go to this folder which is a hidden folder and delete the Hauppauge folder: C:\ProgramData\
Information on how to show hidden folders in Windows: Show Hidden Files and Folders in Windows 7, 8.x, 10, or Vista http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/show-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-vista/
- Once you do this you can reinstall Hauppauge WinTV with latest version from website.
- Now if you scan for channels, you should see them in the WinTV application.
We recommend that you delete the WinTV channel database before you re-scan for channels, especially if you think that your channel line up has changed. To do this, close the WinTV v8/v8.5 application and then run this program:
c:\Program Files (x86)\WinTV\WinTV8\WinTV8.exe -emptydb
The channel list in TitanTV must match the channel list in WinTV. If, for example, you scanned WinTV with an over-the-air antenna but selected a cable TV line up in TitanTV, your channel line will be different and scheduled recordings will fail.
To understand why this happens, lets look at how the process of clicking the record button in TitanTV and how this turns into a WinTV Scheduled recording. When you click the red 'record' button in TitanTV, Titan delivers a .tvpi file to your PC which contains the details of the recording (channel number, channel name, time, date, etc.). But if the channel number doesn't match a channel which WinTV can tune to, WinTV ignores this attempt to schedule the recording and you will not see this scheduled item in the WinTV Scheduler.
There is a log file saved at c:\users\public\hauppauge wintv\logs\wintvtvpi.txt which shows the details of an attempt to schedule a TitanTV recording. Click here to see a sample of this information.
To avoid having to rescan for TV channels, you can save the list of channels you are using. This is called
Saving the WinTV Channels database.
To save your channel database go to:
C:\Users\Public\WinTV\Channel Database (Windows 7 and Vista)
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\WinTV\Channel Database (Windows XP)
Copy the hcwChanDB_5 file to a place for safe keeping. To replace saved Channels just copy HcwChanDB_5 back to Channel Database Dir.
Open the Settings menu in WinTV v8 by clicking on the “gear” button in the lower left hand corner of the WinTV application. Then click on the “All Channels" tab and right click on the channel you wish to edit. Click Details. Change the Preset number to the number you want. You can also change the channel Name.
Example:
You will need to follow this procedure if you are scheduling recordings with Titan TV online program guide. For example, if you scan for TV channels in WinTV v7 and find that channel 2704 is WNBC but in the TitanTV electronic program guide WNBC is on channel 702, then do the following:
The default directory for recorded files is:
C:\Users\Public\Videos
You can change the default directory in WinTV v8 by clicking on the “gear” button, then the Capture tab. Here you will see the Recordings Directory.
In Windows XP, files are recorded to:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\My Videos\
Yes.
If the program you are watching has subtitles when you record you will also get the subtitles as part of the recording. When playing back recorded files in WinTV v8, you can use settings menu to turn the subtitles on or off. ( recorded sub titles can only be seen when using the WinTV v8 application for playback.)
Yes, as long as you can connect the game system to either S-Video or composite video on your WinTV product. If so equipped, you can view and record the game action using the WinTV application software. For close to real time video, and to eliminate the normal delay, go to Settings/Advanced options and put a check mark in Game mode. Restart the WinTV application for the change to take effect.
Some virus software will prevent the WinTV application from completing the installation. If you find this, you will need to temporarily disable the virus sofware.
Here are a couple of virus applications and how to disable them:
- AVG: 1) Right-click the AVG icon in the system tray next to the clock. 2) Click Temporarily disable AVG protection. 3) Choose how long you want the protection to be disabled and whether to disable the Firewall as well 4) then click OK.
There are two main reasons why you might see a black window:
TV Signal strength:. If the TV signal strength is on the edge of being too low, you might see either a black screen where the live TV picture should be, or your live TV picture might be choppy. Also, be sure that the incoming signal from your video source is working properly.
Graphic display adapter related: The video graphics acceleration mode can cause choppy live video or possibly cause a black screen where the live TV picture should be. To optimize the video graphics mode, in the WinTV v7 application go to Settings and look under Video Renderer. EVR is the default setting. Try VMR 7, VMR 9, or overlay for better results. You may also try placing a check mark in “Use hardware acceleration when possible”.
If there is still no improvement, enabling extended logging in WinTV and emailing the log files to tech support will help in troubleshooting the problem. (To obtain extended logs, first go to Settings/Advanced options. Enable extended logging, exit WinTV and reopen it for the change to take effect).
There are two types of recordings WinTV v8 will make: recordings from digital TV and recordings from analog TV.
Recordings from digital TV (ATSC, DVB or QAM) stay in the original digital TV format and in the original video quality. WinTV will save the recordings in a transport stream format (.TS extension). These files may be converted to MPEG2 using options in the WinTV Configuration menu.
When recording from analog TV (NTSC or PAL), recordings are made using MPEG2. You can choose the quality of your analog recordings in the Settings menu under Capture and then Default Analog Recording Quality.
When recording digital TV, all recordings are made in whatever format your digital TV is being transmitted in. For example, ATSC is transmitted as MPEG-2 and therefore WinTV recordings will be MPEG-2. The files will be .TS files.
When recording from analog video or analog TV, WinTV will record MPEG-2 video using a .TS format. To edit your videos, you can use any software editor that can work with .TS files or MPEG-2 files
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 range from approximately 1.7 Gigabytes per hour up to 8.3 Gigabytes per hour.
Analog TV or analog video
The WinTV application converts 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
On those WinTV products with FM radio, you can scan for FM radio channels:
- click the Setup button (gear button) on the lower left hand side of the WinTV app
- click the Device tab
- Choose your WinTV product, and then click Tuner setup
- you should see a list of video and audio sourcs available on your Hauppauge TV tuner. Click Analog FM Radio and then Next
- under Stations, select either Automatic Scan if you want the WinTV application to scan for FM radio stations, or Manual Entry if you want to enter your FM radio stations one at a time
- then click Next to start the FM radio scan
- the scan is complete when the message Scan complete is displayed
- click Next and Next and you will be back to the main WinTV application
- to select your FM radio channel, right click your mouse in the TV window and select Find Channel. You will see your FM radio channels at the end of your channel list.
You can display the TV and FM radio channel list all the time by Right Clicking on the live WinTV v8 window to bring up Find channel. You will see the Channel list (see picture below).
In the upper right hand corner of the Channel list is a small "pin" icon. Click this icon to "pin" your channel list to the WinTV v8 window.
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Ctrl A Aspect ratio
Ctrl D Display the video and audio format of the TV program
Ctrl F Freeze the video
Ctrl Z Open TV Scheduler
Ctrl O View program details (digital TV program, where provided in the broadcast)
Ctrl S Display subtitles
Ctrl W Full screen toggle
Alt F Open File menu for playback
Alt M Open the Task Menu
Alt P Previous channel
Ctrl Q Pause
Ctrl P Play
Alt R Record
Alt S Stop
Alt T Start TV
Ctrl C Catch up
Ctrl > Skip ahead
Ctrl < Skip back
WinTV v8.5 installer 
WinTV v8 QuickInstall and Use Guide
