Hauppauge has begun shipping the HD-PVR. This little box is the first consumer level device capable of capturing HDTV from an analog source and performing real-time H.264 compression. What that means is you can hook the $249 box up to your digital cable, satellite, or other set top box and record high definition TV shows on your PC without the need for a pricy CableCARD.The quality might not be as high as the video quality you'll get from an ATSC, ClearQAM, or CableCard tuner. But the HD-PVR is extremely versatile since it works with a variety of devices. It includes S-Video and composite and component inputs. So if your video device supports any of those standards, you're all set.
The box can handle 1080i and 720p resolutions. Several major media center applications for Windows already support the HD-PVR, including BeyondTV, SageTV and GB-PVR. Windows Vista Media Center support is coming, and MythTV developers are working on adding support to the open source Linux media center application.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-09-2008 @ 7:37AM
Dan said...
ok got mine last monday, needless to say there are some problems right out of the box before you even hook it up, the promised 5.1DD does not work, hauppuage is working on a fix, so all you get is PCM 2.0 and analog RCA and you better just use the analog cause for some unknown reason the left and right audio channels are swapped, so you have to use the analog and swap the cords around so you get the proper channel setting, emailed all this to huappuage support, have not heard a thing yet, now picture is another story, perfect, great I tried various setting from 6500 to 13.5 on constant, all look like the original source, on a dual layer DVD if you use 8000 setting you can get 2hrs on one disc at 13.5 it required 2-dual layer DVD's. now I tried all types of different sources testing this out, dishnet HD PVR, PS3, toshiba HD DVD and oppo DVD, no matter what I used as source the captured video looked the same or very close to the same, this with playback on a samsung 50in plasma 1080i, now i relize this is a brand new device, so I am not getting too worried about the audio problems I have ran up against, as long as hauppuage will fix the issues, so far in the past 7 days I have put about 30-40 hours of use on the device, leaving it on one time 24 hours, never have had any type of heat issue and it runs warm but not hot, the arcsoftware is a bit cheesey for what is out there as editing and authoring software these days, I do not like the issue that you have to make a menu everytime, most the time I want the movie to start when I plug the disc in, also for those HD DVD fans out there, once captured and authored you can use movie factory 6 plus with the HD addon and make HD DVD's from normal DVD's also.
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