Reddit mentions of HAUPPAUGE WinTV-DualHD Dual USB 2.0 HD TV Tuner for Windows PC 1595,Black

Live TV and DVR. You can buy a tv tuner and watch/record live tv, so you don’t have to pay for that expensive DVR from the cable company. It will also record free over the air broadcast TV if you get a cheap antenna. There’s even a setting to cut out the commercials from the recordings.

I did it with a 60$ Hauppauge TV Tuner and OBS studio. Just need an old VCR.

Ill post my OBS settings I used (after a lot of experimentation) so you don't have to do a lot of experimenting. I used NVENC H.264 (Nvidia Encoder) so that I could continue to use and play games on my computer. The CPU Encoder has much better quality at lower bitrates but basically makes your computer unusable on a i7-3770k @ 4.4GHz. If you're not gonna be using your computer or have something like an AMD EPYC or Intel HEDT the CPU Encoder may be worth it.

The following settings gives nearly indecipherable quality compared to the VHS it came off of. The rate is about 3GB per hour.

• Base and Output Resolution: 720x480 @ 29.97FPS.
  
  • The sides of the video may be black or have overscan colors, so drag the red lined picture window to be slightly bigger than the Canvas and center it.
    
• Encoder: NVENC H.264
  
• Bitrate: VBR @ 8000kbps.
  
• Preset: High Quality
  
• Profile: high
  
• Level: auto
  
• Use two-pass encoding
  
• B-frames: 2 (Use low amount because interlacing causes every other frame while panning to be highly different, so high B-frames will cause blurring).
  

I have a couple things going for me. My TV has a built in digital tuner and I live in a major city with access to over 50 OTA channels (most of them crap admittedly).

Up until a couple years ago, you could take for granted that any TV you bought would come with a digital tuner built-in. It's become less common now on newer TVs since eliminating it is a cost cutting measure and OTA just isn't that popular.

However, if you check your TV and it had a coaxial digital antenna input, then all you need is one of these antennas:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00IF70T4M/

If you don't, then you will also need a tuner box that outputs HDMI or whatever:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BO61CMS/

If you want to watch/record to your computer rather than watching on your TV, than you need a TV tuner for your computer:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B015IL0FIW/

As I mentioned before, I live in an area where I can get dozens of channels over the air, including Fox. My parents on the other hand live in the middle of nowhere and can get maybe two OTA channels, neither of which are Fox. Watching the Super Bowl OTA is not an option for them and many other people. I would recommend punching your street into this site to get a rough idea of what channels will be available to you:


https://www.tablotv.com/tools/

This is a really good option. Pair it with whatever antenna you'd like. It allows for two simultaneous streams. Meaning if you use Plex like I mentioned, you can stream two live TV broadcasts at a time.

If that's too expensive, you can go on eBay and find similar Hauppauge tuners for $20 used. Real cheap. Works well.

If you want something a little nicer, you can't go wrong with a HDHomeRun. It'll sit on your network and allow anything to connect to it. That model only gives you 2 streams as well but there are better ones available.

If you want cable, you're going to have to go with a HDHomeRun Prime box. They discontinued the first model because they're supposed to be releasing a new model soon™, meaning you'll have to either wait or seek it out on eBay. The old box supports 3 streams, the new 6. Just a warning, it'll be a hassle setting it up. Calling your cable company and begging for them to give you a card for it and such. Heck sometimes the support agentsdon't even know that's an option. But once you do have everything set up and working, it's rock solid and very performant.

So I have this dual tuner.

I assume PLEX can utilize it to record two streams at once? Are there recommended specs to do that? Ir is it roughly the same passmark score per transcoding and/or recording stream?

Maybe something like this?

Yeah, you need a tuner card. They come in internal, USB, and networked varieties.

The latter two types can also be used with an Android TV box using the Live Channels app, as I mentioned before.

The Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD tuner and Tablo Tuner (rebranded Hauppauge) work. It looks like they have an "Nvidia Shield" version which appears to just be different packaging and probably doesn't include a remote.

I have a shield and it's great. If you're cutting the cord you can get an antenna and a usb tv turner and watch OTA channels right on the Shield. There's an app that gives you a nice guide and DVR right out of the box. Another option is to use HDHomeRun to handle OTA channels. Pair that with Sling/Hulu/YouTube/Fubo/Philo and you'll basically have everything you need.

https://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-WinTV-DualHD-Tuner-Windows-1595/dp/B015IL0FIW/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=usb+tv+tuner&qid=1564112477&s=gateway&sr=8-3

I used Kodi in combination with NextPVR to accomplish this.

I use this one with my Shield no issues.

The 2017 model is the latest version.

I recently purchased the Hauppauge WinTV-DualHD for OTA on my 16GB 2017 Shield. I am using the built-in Live Channels app to watch TV. The WinTV dongle works perfectly with Live Channels.

I did buy a powered indoor antenna as well. I placed the antenna in a window and most of the channels have zero dropouts.

I did nothing to setup the WinTV other than connect it, then open Live Channels and run a channel discovery. I did not load any sort of app or anything else to control the WinTV dongle.

I bought a WD Blue 3D NAND 500GB PC SSD and a SilverStone M.2 SATA SSD to USB Enclosure to record OTA live tv. I put it together, plugged it in, adopted the storage, then I was able to record and time shift live TV.

The Xbox One tuner is not supported. This tuner will work with Plex and is what I use:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B015IL0FIW/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

here's an example, https://www.amazon.com/HAUPPAUGE-WinTV-DualHD-Tuner-Windows-1595/dp/B015IL0FIW/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1525959727&sr=1-4&keywords=tv+tuner&dpID=41Mau7n2AlL&preST=_SX300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

Yeah, just get a TV Tuner, and it works.

I just hate these outdated TV Tuner softwares.

Thanks! If I use WMC, is all I need just a TV tuner (like one of these?)

This thing right here. I didn't look that hard at other options, but that thing has suited my needs pretty well. It saves an exact 1:1 copy of the transport stream and all, and the included software can transcode as well if you prefer to save on space at the cost of compression. I prefer to keep everything intact though (surround sound, closed captioning, different audio tracks...). The TV recordings can also be scheduled as well, and you can do them on a daily or weekly basis too (or a combination of both), so if there's a show you like to watch that plays, say, every weekday at 4PM, you can set it to record that.

Just be mindful though, it can only get two kinds of signals -- over-the-air ATSC signals (so anything you can pick up with an antenna; there's no DRM here bar a few premium AirBox channels in some markets, but those are...well, premium. Duh. Otherwise, all the major networks such as ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and FOX are fair game), and unencrypted ClearQAM cable. ClearQAM has become increasingly rare since the mandate to leave OTA channels unencrypted on cable systems has been gone for a long time. I was lucky enough that the apartment I lived at this past year at college still had the OTA channels in the clear, but I'm not so lucky this summer and next year, so I'll probably have to invest in a CableCard tuner. Oh well.

https://shield.nvidia.com/blog/watch-live-tv-with-android-tv - scroll to the bottom.

A couple of other options in addition to the HDHomeRun -

https://www.amazon.com/HAUPPAUGE-WinTV-DualHD-Tuner-Windows-1595/dp/B015IL0FIW

https://www.amazon.com/Tablo-TUNER-Dual-Tuner-Antenna-Adapter/dp/B076ZZSQY6

It's the second one on this list, https://support.plex.tv/articles/225877427-supported-dvr-tuners-and-antennas/

or this one directly: https://www.amazon.com/HAUPPAUGE-WinTV-DualHD-Tuner-Windows-1595/dp/B015IL0FIW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518382769&sr=8-1&keywords=Hauppauge+WinTV-dualHD

I tested it on my laptop and it was working great! it comes with a little antenna too.

HAUPPAUGE WinTV-DualHD Dual USB 2.0 HD TV Tuner for Windows PC 1595 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015IL0FIW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_mv68ybPQD64G2