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 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

click to enlarge

Scan Complete

click to enlarge

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.

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

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:

• click your right mouse button on 2704 in the All Channel list
• change the Preset to 702
• change the Name of the the channel to WNBC

  Then, when you select WNBC (channel 702) in TitanTV, it will tune to channel 2704, which is WNBC.

   

  

   

   

  

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\

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).  

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 (DVB, 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 by clicking the Setup button (gear button) and then clicking on the Device tab. Choose your WinTV product, and then click Tuner setup. Click Analog FM radio and then Scan.

Once you have scanned for and found FM radio stations, you can listen to FM radio in WinTV v7. To select a channel, Right Click on the live WinTV v7 window to bring up the Option menu, and then click Find channel. Your FM radio channels can be found at the bottom of the 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.

• 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

If you want to use WinTV on your Windows Server, you may encounter the problem that it won’t recognize any of your DVB devices. This is because there is no BDA support (Broadcast Driver Architecture) on Windows Server 2008 / 2012. So if you want to use BDA based hardware (i.e. DVB TV cards) it is neccessary to add BDA harware support manually.

To fix, see these instructions: https://marcowuen.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/howto-add-bda-hardware-support-to-windows-server-2008-r2/