Editing Hauppauge Computer Works (section)

===Personal Video Recorders===
The Personal Video Recorder (PVR) range uses an on-board MPEG/MPEG-2 encoder to compress the incoming analogue TV signals.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Mielewczik |first=Michael |title=Bewährtes und Neues. Analoge TV-Karten unter Linux einsetzen. |journal=Linux Intern |volume=3/2003 |pages=36–38}}</ref>  The benefits of using a hardware encoder include lower CPU usage when encoding live TV.

The first WinTV-PVR product was the WinTV PVR-PCI, launched in late 2000 and not receiving any driver updates since February 2002.  It was joined by the WinTV PVR-USB, which has two variants.  The first variant supported MPEG-2 streams up to 6&nbsp;[[megabit|Mbit]]/s and supported Half-D1 resolutions (320&nbsp;×&nbsp;480).  This was replaced by an updated model supporting up to 12&nbsp;Mbit/s streams and Full-D1 resolution (720&nbsp;×&nbsp;480).

The first WinTV-PVR to gain popularity was the PVR-250.  The original version of the PVR-250 was a variant of the Sag Harbor (PVR-350) which used the ivac15 chipset. Although the chipset was able to do hardware decoding the video out components were not included on the card.  In later versions of the PVR-250 the ivac15 was replaced with the ivac16 to reduce cost and to relieve heat issues.  The PVR-250 and PVR-350 were joined by the USB 2.0 PVR-USB2 to complete their generation of devices.

Their successors, the PVR-150 and PVR-500, were released alongside the PVR-250/350/USB2 and while popular with both OEMs and the general public, there have been numerous driver issues as well as video quality complaints. The PVR-500 was released as a Media Center card and wasn't supplied with Hauppauge's WinTV2000 software.  It was effectively two PVR-150s on a single board, connected via a PCI-PCI bridge chip. The PVR-USB2 was silently replaced with the PVR-USB2+ which is identical both visually and terms of features, but uses a Conexant chipset rather than the Philips chipset in the old model.

From its name and time of release, the PVR-160 appears to be newer than the PVR-150 but it is not.  The PVR-160 is a repackaging of the WinTV Roslyn. The Roslyn is based on the [[Conexant]] Blackbird design and uses the CX2388x video decoder. This board was originally available only to OEMs and third-party software vendors such as Frey Technologies ([[SageTV]]) and Snapstream (BeyondTV). The board was sold under many names including the PVR-250BTV (Snapstream). This card is known to have color and brightness issues that can be corrected somewhat using registry hacks. Hauppauge received a large surplus amount of these cards from OEM and third-party vendors. The cards were repackaged with an MCE remote and receiver and rebranded the PVR-160. The PVR-160 was often mistakenly referred to as the PVR-250MCE but is not related to the PVR-250.