REVIEW: Hauppauge HD PVR

The Hauppauge HD PVR is a USB capture card for you PC, available for just under $200. What sets it apart from the rest is that the HD PVR can record at HD resolutions from component sources (all the way up to 1080p!). This means you can hook your PS3 or XBOX 360 up to the HD PVR and record gameplay videos in HD. Cool right? What's even better is that you have the ability to record TV shows and movies off of your DirectTV or digital cable.

Some movies, such as the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars series, have never been released on Blu-ray or HD-DVD. However, they routinely run on HD channels such as HDNET (or similar). Someone with a HD PVR could make an HD recording of one of these films with no commercials and 5.1 channel ac3 sound. Of course in order to do that, you'd need premium HD movie channels, which I am not fortunate enough to have.

So far, I have been more than pleased with this unit. It records in .ts format, which I have learned is the native format of Blu-ray discs. Those of you lucky enough to have a Blu-ray burner can burn these recordings to Blu-ray very easily. The rest of us will probably want to convert these recordings to DVD (mpeg-2) Xvid (avi), or H.264 (mkv). For converting to DVD, I recommend Tmpgenc 4.0 Express. I'm a big supported of Xvid, which technically Tmpgenc supports, but I haven't fooled around with it yet.

What I haven't seen mentioned in any description of the HD PVR online is just how good the SD recording quality is. Everyone raves about the HD features, but for those of you who just want to record at 480i or 480p this unit is stellar. SD recordings look and sound great, way better than any other capture card I've owned in the past (ATI Wonder PCI, Pinnacle TV USB 2.o, ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0). I have burned a couple DVDs of recorded samples, after converting to mpeg-2.

Sample formats recorded:
-480p
- 720p
-1080i
-1080p

I haven't tried to play my HD recordings through my Dolby receiver yet, so I'm not sure if the 5.1 channel recording worked correctly. They sound fine on the stereo speakers I've sampled them on. I'll update this post when I get a chance, and I'll add some pictures.

In Short:
- It records in HD.
- SageTV and gbPVR both support it.
- Recording quality is excellent for all resolutions, 480i and 480p included.
- I wish it could record to different formats. The on board h.264 encoder is obviously the issue here, but still.

Update 1:
A great source of info and tools for HD PVR owners is ARogan's blog. The ArcSoft recording software that came with my HD PVR won't play nice with Vista Premium 64-bit, so I've used ARogan's rctvcap for all of my recordings.