linux-drivers/
drivers/media/pci/saa7164

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR PCIe TV tuners (NXP SAA7164)

A family of PCIe TV tuner cards built on NXP's SAA7164 chip, sold by Hauppauge under the WinTV-HVR-2200, 2205, 2250, and 2255 names from the late 2000s through the mid-2010s. The cards combine analog and digital (ATSC/DVB) TV capture for desktop PCs and were popular with home-theatre and PVR users before USB tuners and streaming displaced them.

keep-annotate conf=0.87 deploy=low replacement=none subsystem=media category=media-camera-tv
87%

recommendation

Worth keeping but documenting as legacy because the SAA7164-based Hauppauge cards (HVR-2200/2205/2250/2255) have all been discontinued by Hauppauge, with the WinTV-quadHD listed as the replacement product. However, the driver is not abandoned: it picked up bug fixes as recently as 2022 and 2026, and Hauppauge still publishes Linux support pages, so an installed base of these PCIe TV cards is clearly still in use.

repository signals

16 files
9,920 source lines
20 commits, 5y
+60 / −116 lines added / removed, 5y
14 authors, 5y
monthly commits · 2021-04-21 → 2026-04-21 · 20 total · active in 14/61 months
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sources

  1. lore.kernel.org

    The driver still receives upstream fixes in 2026; a v7 patch for saa7164-core.c added ioremap return checks and was tagged for stable.

  2. lore.kernel.org

    The driver also saw non-treewide bug-fix activity in 2022, indicating continued maintenance rather than abandonment.

  3. hauppauge.com

    Hauppauge's store marks the WinTV-HVR-2255 as discontinued and says the WinTV-quadHD is a replacement for most applications.

  4. hauppauge.com

    Hauppauge's store also marks the European WinTV-HVR-2205 as discontinued.

  5. hauppauge.com

    Hauppauge support still documents Linux support for the HVR-2255/HVR-2205 and HVR-2250 family, suggesting some residual installed base.

codex reasoning notes (technical)

Kernel source inspection via shell `rg` shows this directory drives Hauppauge WinTV-HVR2200/2205/2250/2255 PCIe TV cards built around the SAA7164. lore_activity on saa7164-core.c returned recent 2026 linux-media fixes and no removal discussion evidence, so this is not removal-ready. Web search found official Hauppauge store/support pages showing HVR-2255 and HVR-2205 are discontinued, with WinTV-quadHD named as a hardware replacement, but not an upstream driver drop-in. Conclusion: legacy/discontinued hardware with low current deployment, yet still enough upstream bug-fix traffic to keep the driver and annotate it as legacy rather than deprecate/remove.