Thursday, January 17, 2008
Hauppauge Intros PC HD Video Recorder
Posted by Jeremy Charette in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 06:00 AM
"Hauppauge obviously decided to leave one big surprise until later in the week at CES. Yesterday it introduced an HD video recorder for the PC, known as the HD PVR. It connects to the computer via USB, and records HD TV in real time, converting into the ISO standard H.264 format. The HD PVR can connect to high definition cable TV or satellite TV set top box receivers using standard component cables...it can also create AVCHD recordings (the format used on Blu-ray high definition players). As part of the software applications which will be shipped with Hauppauge's HD encoder, a DVD burning application will be provided which can take AVCHD formatted recordings and burn them onto a conventional DVD disc. These discs can then be played in Blu-ray DVD players. About 2 hours of Blu-ray HD content can be recorded on a 4.7 GB DVD disk."
I like the idea of a PVR device for my computer that works with my cable box, but not if it takes complete control of the box itself. In order to record two different shows at the same time, I'd need two HD PVRs and two cable boxes. That seems like overkill if you ask me. I'll take a TiVo HD instead, thanks. Now that this WILL be good for is capturing video from component video sources such as game consoles or HD DVD/Blu-Ray players for archiving or encoding to H.264. I haven't seen a reasonably priced HD capture device on the market up 'til now.
