Hauppauge DEC 2000-T

I bought it to work with my bedroom tv and pc. Works well with tv but causes critical errors when i try to plug it into computer running vista ( the system shuts down)

The Hauppauge DEC 2000-T freeview box is supplied with everything in the box you need to get started. It has the ability to record programs directly to my PC's Hard Drive, which is the reason I bought it. It also has the ability to record programs using the timer, and it works great with no problems at all.

Provided you use a good quality outside roof aerial, the picture and sound quality are both very good. I have an NTL Digital TV box and the picture quality from my DEC 2000-T easily matches it.

I bought it brand new from Scan Computers for £31, including next day delivery. Some companies on the net are asking £100+ for the Hauppauge DEC 2000-T and it's definitely not worth that kind of money. But for £31 (including next day delivery) it's a real bargain.

Looking at some of the reviews on here, I have to say I haven't experienced any of the problems that others have encountered with this unit. I am running the DEC 2000 on a pretty high spec PC, and I am also using a good quality roof aerial to receive the signal. It could be that's why I'm not having any problems!

Taking the price I paid into consideration, I have to say I'm very happy with my freeview box, and I would recommend it anyone who wants to record directly on to their PC.

Bought it as it had both scart and USB, but I need a better aerial for PC use, so it is on my main TV.

I paid £66, but I think they are more expensive now.

There are lots of other boxes that do much the same as this for £30-£40, without the scart and sound out, so if you want a dual purpose box its OK. No software problems. It has locked up once or twice, but if you turn it off and on again, it resets OK. My other two freeview boxes lock up also, but not too frequently to be a problem.

The Hauppauge DEC 2000t is not very reliable, I only bought it so i could watch free view on my pc. Once i had updated the version it improved by one hundred times so it is not bad now but still not very reliable.

I bought the Hauppauge DEC 2000t in the back of Hauppauge reputation for manufacturing quality products. I wanted DVB on my PC and this product listed great features. What a piece of junk. The whole things hangs after changing channels a few times or resizing the screen. I've upgraded the drivers and software twice, now on v216, but the problems are still there. Support at Hauppauge has been useless so I feel I'm stuck with a product that just doesn't live up to its marketing hype. I wouldn't buy another of their products.

I liked the ideal of having both a set top box and PC tuner in one. Having persevered for the last few months I would have to say that the Hauppauge DEC 2000t is a very flaky DVB and I could not recommend you buy one..

Using it as a set top box the performance isn't too bad. It takes maybe 30 seconds to start up, OK I can live with that, but you do not have access to Text, BBCi etc as you do with a dedicated set top box, and the signal breaks up occasionally (I don't have any problem with a dedicated freeview unit, so it's not the aerial). I have bought a Sony VTX-D800U, which has been flawless.

On the PC side I haved tried it both with my laptop Toshiba Tecra 8200 PIII 850Mhz 512Mb RAM WIN2000 and also on Dell Dimension PIII 550Mhz 256RAM Win98 SE, the Dec2000 has performed poorly on both.

Firstly on the Tosh, I've lost count the number of times I've had to re-install the software due to the application crashing and then not working after rebooted both the device and the laptop. Problems like all channels are OK except no sound on ITV, it just locks, the text application is very flaky and crashes regularly. All in all, completely un-reliable. I missed recording numerous films over Xmas.

On the Dell the situation is not much better, on the first install it affected my network connections. De-installed, cleared all the devices and re-installing seemed to sort it. However the application is very fragile and regularly hangs.

In conclusion this product performs poorly as a set top box and a PC tuner, my advice would be to buy separate products, but you don't have much choice on the PC side if you want freeview.

Anyone want a Dec2000 going cheap?

Will be returning this Hauppauge DEC 2000t for a refund or replacement as there is no sound (great picture) when used through RF cable on TV. I am concerned about replacing as I notice another review stating the same issue.

I also have a Nokia 221T and a Pace Twin Tuner Unit for comparison.

Buy the Hauppauge DEC 2000t at your peril....

I bought this unit with high hopes as it's features were just what I wanted and Hauppauge have been leaders in TV on PC's for years. Powering up unit and using with TV was straight forward and intuitive. However the first thing that hit me was that no teletext using the TV. That is a serious omission as I really heavily on it for work and viewing schedules.

Connecting to the PC though a USB 1.1 port was when the problems started. I couldn't get it to work. I use Win 2000 and this is the first time in 3 years that I've had the blue screen and total lock-up. Eventually after searching support site I found updated software which after several tries eventually started to work. It reminded me of installing video drivers 5 years ago. Every bit of the old software had to be removed individually, then another DOS program to remove Registry entries, before the new stuff can be installed.

I expected to see new entries in the USB ports but not a Virtual Network Device that I can find nothing about and knocks out my Network card connection to cable modem if I boot up with the USB cable connected to the DEC 2000T.

I managed to view TV channels on PC and recorded a programme, but be warned the MPEG2 format is not transferable to DVD as it needs converting using another piece of software not supplied.

The Teletext on the PC I never got to work, even the latest version. I phoned support twice and each time after listening for 10 minutes about how important my call was to them, I got shunted onto a message recorder. Two weeks later they still haven't called. Also sent emails but nobody replied. For the price it's a joke, stay away, mine is being returned for a refund because of audio problem on the RF output so I'm lucky.

There may be better Freeview boxes around than the Hauppauge DEC 2000t, but I wanted one that gave the option to record onto computer digitally. I use the 1.48 drivers from Hauppauge, and have no problems. The software isn't totally flexible, but you can get free software to help out.

Here's an example use:

You want to record something off TV to keep, and you want the highest quality.

You COULD use an MPEG2 card like ATI AIW, or the HAUPPUAGE PVR, but you will have an analogue to digital conversion.

You COULD use a DV capture, and then use TMPGENC to encode - but I never got very good results with it, it has to come from an analogue signal, and you have huge amounts of intermediate storage, and huge conversion times.

With this DEC2000T you have the original broadcasters MPEG2 stream copied directly to your PC (and to be honest, a broadcaster is going to have better encoding than most people can afford). This cannot be editted as it is not a true programme stream. You can use PVAstrumento from www.offryn.de to do the job (I use 2.0.30) which has coped with every channel I've tried it with - ITV, BBC1, BBC2, The Hits and ITV2. It seems to do the conversion at 5x speed (on my 800MHz Dell X200!). i.e. 20 mins of video. takes about 4 mins to create a programme stream from. You can now edit this in most software, BUT they will reencode. However a fantastic DVD authoring product from http://www.pegasys-inc.com/e_main.html will allow you to do cuts on the I-frames and thus avoid reencoding. You can get a 30 day trial of the software from there. I've also used AVestensione V0.2.2 from offryn.de to change a video from widescreen to 4:3 when you get problems with the first bit of the stream in wide screen (i.e. broadcasters introduction), but the thing you want is in 4:3.

So, yes, it is possible to record the original broadcasters DVB signal onto a DVD WITHOUT REENCODING the MPEG2 stream. This gives the best quality you are going to get (apart from recording onto DV25 from a very strong analogue signal) and the fastest way of doing it - a straightforward record of a 1 hour programme, removing the adverts, and making a DVD Video directory will take about 15 minutes of time (of which about 10 will be the convert to programme stream).

You can also use dvrec as other reviewers have mentioned to turn it into a video recorder.