More on the Hauppauge HD PVR
February 7th, 2008 at 1:37 pm by Rakesh
There’s been a groundswell of interest in the Hauppauge HD PVR device, ever since Hauppauge announced it at CES in early January. I first heard about the device from Hauppauge on a visit to their offices in Hauppauge, NY back in November 2007. Since then, I’ve learned quite a bit more about the device. We’re taking a lot of interest in this new device, but until we actual get a test unit, we can’t say whether or not we’ll support it.
For those of you who haven’t heard about the new device, I’ll briefly recap its capabilities: it’ll take in component video (you know, the red, green, and blue cables on the back of your cable or satellite set-top box — the ones that can carry an HD signal) and encode it to H.264 at up to 25 Mbit/s. And it includes Hauppauge’s standard IR blaster with code library.
Anyways, here is some of what I know about it:
- Hauppauge’s calling it the HD PVR — for now. The name may change before it’s released.
- It can accept component video in (see a picture) up to 1080p
- It can encode that component video to H.264 transport streams (in hardware)
- The hardware itself is basically done — Hauppauge’s just waiting on the final case design (and Chinese New Year has slowed this down)
- It includes the same Hauppauge IR blaster & code library included with other Hauppauge products
- It’s based on a chip from a company called Ambarella (http://www.ambarella.com/)
- It’s an all-in-one chip that has a digitizer and H.264 encoder
- A similar chip from Ambarella happens to be used in popular HD camcorders
- The compression data rates works between 1 Mbit/s and 25 Mbit/s
- The H.264 encoder outputs H.264 transport streams
- The Ambarella chip also has an H.264 decoder and the Hauppauge HD PVR will ship with a video out, but…
- The video out function will more than likely NOT be activated when the HD PVR ships (and possibly never, for reasons relating to the Ambarella driver)
- You’ll need a relatively powerful PC to playback these recordings
- Hauppauge is still making some tweaks to the HD PVR’s drivers as well
- Hauppauge expects for the product to be shipping before the end of this quarter (ie before March 31, 2008)
(Note: the image above is NOT the device — it’s just a set-top box with some component video cables. I’ve requested some photographs and will hopefully have some soon.)
(Note #2: All of the information above was posted *with* permission from Hauppauge — specifically, Ken Plotkin reviewed a draft and gave me the green light to post it.)
February 8th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
So what sort of audio in are we talking about? Optical? Coax? HDMI? This is USB based right?
February 8th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
[...] Rakesh has posted a number of details in the SnapStream Blog. He writes that it will encode 1080p component video as H.264 at a bit rates [...]
February 11th, 2008 at 10:28 am
So from the readings it appears like a standalone product? Any word on Sage or Vista MC support?
February 11th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Hopefully this card will have Linux drivers available. I’m looking forward to using it with MythTV. Sign me up for at least one of these!
February 16th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I emailed hauppauge asking if there would be a linux driver… their answer was NO!
I’ve sent a follow up asking if they plan on assisting the community with the creation of a driver… I’ll post back if they reply.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:36 am
It’s a usb device — who cares if they release drivers or not….. somebody can always reverse engineer the usb protocol.
These companies rarely talk about plans for a linux driver, regardless or whether they’re working on one or not, until long after the product’s initial release.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Why doesn’t someone build this into a DVR box? Sure you can build a HTPC, but most consumers would like to go to a BB B&M and take it home are start recording.
Having said that, i do have a HVR950 for my desktop machine. Records OTA HD nicely. I only play it back on my 19″ CRT monitor though. Hopefully, I’ll be upgrading that to a 24″ widescreen monitor/HDTV in the next year.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
does hauppauge have any plans to add networking? It would be nice….
March 5th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Looks like it will have digital audio inputs. More info was given out from CeBIT about it.
March 21st, 2008 at 10:43 am
If I understand right, it doesn’t have a tuner. So if I want to use it to encode my OTA HD recordings (which normally takes hours), I’d have to connect my video cards component output into this Hauppage box, and btv would have to play it the show. This all seems well and good, unless you’re like me and have an older HDTV with only component input (no hdmi)… so with my component output hooked up to this box, I can’t hook up my PC to my HDTV anymore… unless there are component splitters?
March 26th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Although Hauppauge do not officially support Linux drivers, there are linuxtv developers who work at Hauppauge and from what I’ve read on #mythtv-users there will be linux drivers.
March 29th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
[...] More on the Happauge HD PVR - Snapstream Blog [...]
March 31st, 2008 at 10:26 am
They should add MPEG2 compression as an option to the mix so Media Center is supported and to relax the PC playback requirements at the expense of storage and network bandwidth.
March 31st, 2008 at 12:59 pm
[...] points of interest from the SnapStream Blog post [...]
April 4th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
[...] Brent says an IR emitter may also be included for controlling connected cable/satellite boxes. From earlier reports, the device is capable of handling full 1080p video and is able to encode video streams to H.264 [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Now available for Pre-Order! check out…> http://www.hauppauge.com
I’m sooo stoked to be able to record ANYTHING from my HD STB, PS3 (aka Blue Ray Player) and HDV Camera onto my PC! Also, heard the included SW allow burning AVCHD files onto DVDs and BD Disc…and then plkayed back in any Blue-Ray Player. My Video Library is about to undergo a major evolution
April 8th, 2008 at 7:54 am
It’s finally here!!
April 8th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Does anybody know if there is a MCE integration in the works? It would be great to integrate this the same way the Hava box was worked in.
April 9th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
MCE Needs to Support h.264…which hopefully FIJI will. For non-fiji systems…perhaps a plug-in is in the works