TVSquad

If you've been waiting to get your hands on the new HD-PVR from Hauppauge, you might have to wait a little bit longer. Brent Evans reports that the device, which had been targeted for a late March launch has been pushed back and is now scheduled for a May or June release.

The HD-PVR will be able to capture HD video from any component video output and compress it in real time to H.264. In other words, you can using your existing cable or satellite box to flip channels, and record HDTV without getting a CableCard tuner for your PC.

Evans has also learned that Windows Media Center will not support the new device at launch, but that you should be able to use the HD-PVR with a Windows Media Center machine by this summer. But we'd be surprised if the device isn't supported by third party media center software like SageTV, BeyondTV, and MythTV.

If you want to watch HDTV on a media center PC, you generally have two choices. You can get a CableCard tuner for handling encrypted high definition cable, or you can get an HDTV tuner that handles over the air and unencrypted (ClearQAM) cable signals.

AverMedia's AverTV Combo PCIe x1 M780 tuner is one of the latter. But so far, it's only been able to pick up over the air signals, but no ClearQAM.

Now it looks like the folks at AverMedia have issued a driver update that adds ClearQAM support for the tuner. The driver comes in x86 and x64 varieties, and works only with Windows Vista.

[via Chris Lanier]