Hauppauge HD PVR, Free Your HDTV

[admin]

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


Discuss "Hauppauge HD PVR, Free Your HDTV" here. Read the article.

[alexsound]

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


Discuss "Hauppauge HD PVR, Free Your HDTV" here. Read the article.

I HOPE I'm wrong, but this will get stopped before it gets going. I bet there will lawsuit, upon lawsuit from the major studio's that will cause this device to become a distant memory. Again, I REALLY hope I'm wrong on this.

[Wayde Robson]

I HOPE I'm wrong...

Me too. But I am not sure the video quality ramifications of recording analogue or if digital set-top-boxes have a way of downrezzing the video quality if it's being recorded.

I mean... how can it? Your HDTV receives the component video and plays it back flawlessly, right?

I just wonder if devices like this will bring us one step closer to the ICT flag being activated.

But you see... THIS is exactly what I'm talking about when I have criticized Sony and Blu-ray in the past.

Do you think Sony or the BDA wants you making your own AVC discs on DVD? Not on your life! If they could stop you better believe they would.

Back in the day Sony might have developed a box like this. But not now. It's because Sony is a studio now, it doesn't care to push the limits of technology and wow-factor to give people cool electronics.

But it used to? It's Sony vs Universal and it went all the way to the supreme court and gave us the concept of "fair use". Recording TV on a VCR was considered fair use and was declared legal and that decision is used to this day to defend MP3 players and anyone who wants to back-up their CDs, DVDs or recorded HDTV. Legally it constitutes fair use.

Back in those days Sony was a ground-breaking disturber of the stuff.

Nowadays it's groups like Hauppauge, TiVo and Sling Media that fill that void.

That's why I love these companies!

[patnshan]

I'd like to buy one right now but I think they will disable it somehow in the future. There is no way this will be allowed to work as described.

Pat

[Biggiesized]

Will the device let you capture the native MPEG-2 transport streams?

[joebob]

I have a question about this box. Can you pipe the video from your computer back to your TV using the DVR box? I read somewhere that they are not enabling video out from the box, but I can't confirm it. If so, that's a show stopper for me, because I don't have a good way to get video from my computer to the TV.

[autoboy]

This device will absolutely not get stopped for the same reason that SD analog recording did not get stopped. It is fair use. HD cable boxes are not going to downrez the HD signal from their cable boxes because a good # of people use analog cables exclusively. Comcast hooks up your cable box with Component, not HDMI cables. That means every single home that had an installer hook up their box needs to return to change cables. Not a chance. This may cause BluRay to enable the analog flag, but I doubt it since their copy protection is beaten already.

There are many boxes out there capable of playing back the h.264 archived on your computer. My favorite is SageTV. With SageTV you can replace your Tivo with a computer, hook up SageTV HD extender boxes, and watch your entire library anywhere in the house you want on any display. This is what this box is made for. It is made for people that roll their own HD DVRs. I've got one on order. If you want, I can report back on how well it works.

No, it will not get bit perfect mpeg2 recordings from your cable box because it is recording in the analog domain. There is no indication that it will record in mpeg2 either. If you want bit perfect HD mpeg2, get a R5000 from Nextcom. They are expensive and mine freezes on me. Although, it seems I am a rare case.

[fredk]

disable it somehow in the future.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!

M$ has already implemented this in Vista. Any content provider can provide the OS a content policy telling the OS which outputs it wishes to be disabled.

I don't know how the stodios and the cable providers negotiate, but I suspect that studios will, at some point, refuse to supply full HD content without assurances that such a policy engine also be implemented on set top boxes.

Studio: "What, you don't have a content policy enabled box? No problem, we have this 'special' version of the program for you."

I wonder if we will get to the point where some providers will try to enforce such restrictions and others won't?

Fred

[autoboy]

Not a chance. Component cabling is not going anywhere and a component cable cannot tell the difference between a TV or this device. Whether or not Vista Media Center (VMC) picks it up will only determine its own future. If they choose to not support this device, users will find other programs that do and VMC will disappear.

[BoredSysAdmin]

Scientific Atlanta’s Explorer 8300HD Digital Cable/PVR receiver has a useless SATA output.

What??? I have 8300HD and I have 500Gb Sata Hard drive connected to it[ Using External SATA enclosure], allows me to store 5/6 time more content.... Obliviously I still can't copy that data off to PC, but surely not USELESS

But Besides that, I love to get my hands as soon as that PVR [or more correctly external capture device] comes out