Hauppauge HD PVR, Free Your HDTV

If an analogue HD PVR that lets you easily copy content in full HD to your PC will piss off the studios, Hauppauge Digital will have them seeing red. The PC peripheral manufacturer is now taking orders for its highly anticipated HD PVR.

Anyone who owns a digital cable or satellite box with a built-in PVR knows the frustration of not being able to dump recorded programs to external storage.

Example: Scientific Atlanta’s Explorer 8300HD Digital Cable/PVR receiver has a useless SATA output. The SATA (Serial ATA) output should allow you to copy programming from the PVR to a hard drive. Of course its activation is at the discretion of your local cable TV provider.

So, you’re more likely to see a flock of pigs making lazy circles in the sky than see the SATA port activated by the cable company. Studios don’t want you storing their content and Cable TV providers know who butters its bread.

Hauppauge is a brand known widely among the DIY HTPC crowd. The company makes the most affordable and reliable hardware tuner cards for your PC. Now it's about to release a new HD PVR that’ll let you record programming from any HD set-top box via component (YPbPr) cables. So, no need to worry about DRM because the HD PVR is recording in the analogue realm.

The device records up to 720p or 1080i resolution with an H.264 hardware encoder. It then dumps your recorded HD programming to your PC via USB for archiving.

The HD PVR can also record in AVC-HD, the format used on Blu-ray discs. A DVD burning application will be included with the HD PVR that will let you burn AVC-HD onto DVD. About two hours of AVC-HD content in full high definition can be stored on a 4.7 GB disc. You can then playback this high definition DVD over a Blu-ray player.

Hauppauge just brought personal video recording into the high definition age and probably pissed off a lot of studios in the process.