Hauppauge officially announces HD PVR support in Windows Media Center
By Richard Lawler 
posted August 5th 2010 3:39PM
posted August 5th 2010 3:39PM
Hauppauge Introduces High Definition Video Recorder Support for Windows Media Center
A new update to HD PVR, Hauppauge's high definition personal video recorder, now allows Windows Media Center to record premium HD TV content from cable or satellite TV
HAUPPAUGE, N.Y., Aug. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Hauppauge Digital, Inc. (Nasdaq: HAUP), the world's leading developer and manufacturer of analog and digital TV receiver products for personal computers, has announced that the HD PVR is now supported as a TV video recorder in Windows Media Center. With a free software update from Hauppauge, Windows Media Center can now use the HD PVR to record high definition TV programs from a cable TV or satellite set top box. HD PVR can record HD TV from any cable TV or satellite set top box which has a component video output. In addition to high definition video, HD PVR can record 5.1 channel audio through its optical audio connections.
Windows Media Center is a feature of all Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional versions, and has currently been installed in over 50 million PCs. Windows Media Center allows users to watch and record TV on their Windows 7 PC. HD PVR adds to Windows Media Center the ability to record high definition premium TV programs, as long as the user has a subscription to those services through their cable TV or satellite operator.
With this new software update, users of Windows Media Center can now create libraries of their favorite premium TV programs in HD and with full 5.1 channel audio.
Hauppauge has other TV tuner products which allow high definition over-the-air ATSC and clear QAM digital cable TV to be recorded with Windows Media Center, but the HD PVR is the first high definition video recorder on the market which will allow Windows Media Center to record high definition TV from a cable TV or satellite set top box.
HD PVR records from cable TV and satellite set top boxes through component video, at HD resolutions up to 1080i. To allow the Windows Media Center electronic program guide to automatically record a cable or satellite TV program on a specified TV channel, HD PVR includes an 'IR blaster' which will automatically change the TV channel on the set top box. For example, if a user schedules a recording of the popular HBO show "Entourage" on their premium cable or satellite set top box, the HD PVR will use the IR blaster to change the set top box to the correct channel before recording the TV show.
The HD PVR has a retail price of $199, and is available from Amazon, Fry's Electronics and the Micro Center computer stores. All current users of the Hauppauge HD PVR can download the support for Windows Media Center at no charge from the Hauppauge website at:
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_hdpvr.html
About Hauppauge
Hauppauge Digital, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAUP) is a leading developer and manufacturer of digital TV and data broadcast receiver products for personal computers. Through its Hauppauge Computer Works, Inc. and Hauppauge Digital Europe subsidiaries, the Company designs and develops digital video boards for TV-in-a-window, digital video editing and video conferencing. The Company is headquartered in Hauppauge, New York, with administrative offices in New York, Singapore, Taiwan, Ireland and Luxembourg and sales offices in Germany, London, Paris, The Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Singapore and California. The Company's Internet web site can be found at http://www.hauppauge.com. Hauppauge and WinTV are registered trademarks of Hauppauge Computer Works, Inc. Other product or service names herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE Hauppauge Digital, Inc.
I would buy it just for the lights!..so pretty...blue lights people!! *runs around screaming*
@One Love Yeah, no...the lights are annoying.
I tried out the official support when it was in beta, and the setup was really easy, and it worked well, but I still went back to DVBLink because the official drivers don't support control of my DirecTV box over serial, only IR. I talked to a rep at Hauppauge, and they said serial wasn't planned either.
...also, why wouldn't you just buy an internal tuner card and use the computer as a DVR?
@One Love Because the internal tuners (except CableCARD ones) can't capture DRM-free 1080i content from a STB.
@One Love
Because there aren't any internal tuners that can capture an HD component signal. This lets you record anything your TV can display with no restrictions on premium content...
@autoexecbat False.
@One Love The lights make me think of Poltergeist the film
@autoexecbat Black Magic Intensity Pro can
@One Love 'Cause you can't use that to record Modern Warfare 2 montage clips in Sexy HD
@somethingwired7
not if source is hdcp encrypted, which is most protected content.
Hauppauge? Hauppauge!
@kwonyu80
Total hauppauge. Like, I've never seen so much hauppauge.
Ceton's looks like a better solution.
@The Punisher
not if you don't use cable, and i for one, never will.
Most Cableco offerings are so compressed i'd rather watch a rip or torrent than watch the crap the cableco is spewing into the ether.
@TheRealMikeyG You almost say that as if a torrent/rip is only a bit better than what is being pumped through your cable provider... dunno where you get yours from but mine are transparent to the hd/bluray sources haha.
That's great news! Now, WMC users can share the frustration in using this product!
@Wolfie351
Yeah no kidding. The HD-PVR is a great idea in concept, too back crappy hardware and terrible drivers have ruined this product.
If you buy one, make sure the store has a good return policy. After 4 rmas and constant lockups I have given up on this thing.
@Entz I've had great results so far using Sage TV 7.
@Entz
I've had great results in MythTV.
It seems like Microsoft is the weak link here.
So what's thing supposed to do again?
@LANjackal
Looks like a flatbed scanner to me.
To the people wondering what this is for, it's mainly, but not limited to, people to pipe HD feeds from say DirecTV from a set-top-box into Windows Media Center. CableCards are another option, but a different beast entirely. I would think that a bulk of the people using the HD-PVR can't get a CableCard from their cable company, or a limited to satellite due to location. It's one of the few ways of getting premium HD TV into WMC
@perpetual98 I use one as a way to record my XBox and it works great. Spend my spare time editing together videos from various Call of Duty or Halo games into montages to show off how cool I am and that I think I'm better at the games then everyone else haha
I'm a big fan of the HD-PVR, I've been using one on my MythTV setup for about a year now. My biggest gripe is that it records EVERYTHING in hd resolution regardless of the source format, so my 30 minute standard def Daily Show recordings clock in at like 5 gigs.
As for the pretty lights, I'm pretty sure you can disable them if they're too distracting. I recall seeing a howto on either the Boxee or XBMC forums.
@JerkyChew
I record everything at 720p on mine and my half hour recordings are only about 800mb. You've got your quality settings way too high.
@JerkyChew
I use EyeTV with it and am able to change the recording datarate. You probably have it set at the highest 13.5Mbps. I record one hour HD shows at 6 gigs. And yes you can turn off the lights.
@JerkyChew
You have to set your cable box to output the native resolution of the show. If you box outputs 1080p all the time then the HDPVR will recored 1080p.
BTW, most STBs default to a set output which is crap since they have horrible scalers in them.
Hauppauge! has the worst Windows drivers and software I have ever seen shipped out to the unsuspecting public. Any alternative to their software, is a good one.
Good, now add full MPEG-4 support to Windows Live Movie Maker. I'm tired of converting movies to AVI just so I can edit them without the video lag.
Meanwhile mine's been chugging along perfectly under Myth TV for well over a year...
i own one of these could never make it work correctly with u-verse. does anyone else have a uvser +win7+hdpvr setup working? if so any tutorials? i cant get it to change channels.
@kchase731 It's a problem with the U-Verse receiver. It uses a new IR technology that uses Phillips RCMM codes. There's only a couple of IR blasters that are known to work with u-verse boxes. Do a search for "RCMM U-Verse" on Google and you should find some information.
Does it still overheat like a toaster? I returned 3 of these to Hauppauge and pretty much gave up hope due to the heat problem.
Screw this I will just use my VCR as I did in early 90's while growing up ;)
This product is a piece of crap.. I would not recommend it to anyone.. not only is the quality of the HD recording terrible it's also so inconsistent... This thing always needs a power cycle to get it to work correctly.
@jtadeo
I hope Microsoft's foot dragging in terms of MCE support for this product does not doom it. It would be a shame for such a cool (and fairly unique) product to die because of neglect on the part of Microsoft.
IR blasters?! Don't tell Nilay.
If DirecTV would have went forward with their PC tuner this wouldn't be needed at all. You would think that at this point in the game the need for IR blasters would a distant memory.
I'd still rather be able to directly pipe DirecTV into my Media Center PC. I'm still cursing about their decision to cancel the DirecPC project.
I have been using the HDPVR for well over a year now I think I have had it lock up twice on my over that span. I currently have it setup DVBlink and WMC and I love it. I used to use sagetv and a a 3rd party Ir Blaster program. Which was buggy.
Now I get constant success in channel changes and quality I am using a HD Directv STB pumped into this thing.
Haven't been happier with WMC since I got this working. If only Directv would of followed thru with the PC tuner.
I guess it will become popular.
www.gindart.com
I've been using this for over 2 months now with MythTV. Sure the blue lights can be annoying, but I have in under my wall mounted TV on a shelf and it creates a sort of ambient lighting. Not one problem with it and it runs pretty cool.
I bought one of these when they were first released. I didn't use it much at first as the drivers did not support 5.1. Once that was fixed, I used it occasionally with the Hauppauge software. Once DVBLink arrived, I integrated it into my WMC test system. Using firewire for channel control with a Motorola 6412, it works but not reliably. Sometimes it would record every scheduled event for an entire week, but then fail constantly. I have set up the STB, the WMC, and the HDPVR to power cycle every morning at 4am. That improved the situation somewhat. The biggest problem now is that MC7 will try to record a scheduled event but the end time will be completely wrong...8 hours longer than it should. Very odd.
I was considering this new beta driver but have not had time to image my existing test system and try this new driver on a clean install. Now that it is no longer beta, I'll have to bump it up on the list.
People who say these do not work at all either did not set it up correctly, had an incompatible STB (google it there are some out there), or have no tolerance for missed recordings. It works, but not 100%.
@Trevor - I have 2 shuttle SFF MCE7 machines setup with the HD-PVR and the DVBLINK. Same moto boxes and firewire channel changing. I decided to update 1 of the 2 systems to the native drivers and have been quite pleased so far. I un-installed the dvb-link and installed via the instructions they provide. Super easy and the system overall seems to be more reliable and responsive that it ever was with dvblink.
I am getting ready to update the other box this weekend. I have to say it's about time and glad it's finally native. You just have to make a small reg setting to fire off channel.exe, same parameters as used in dvblink.
check out the review with FAQ's (including the control of the Direct TV over serial workaround) on www.missingremote.com
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
You’re commenting as Diabolus in Musica. (Sign out)
YOUR COMMENTS
This is great news to me as I already own one of these HD PVRs and use it heavely to capture my 360 gaming sessions, convert VHS to digital and record Netflix content to my HDDs... works like a charm.
Looks like a scanner. lol
Hauppauge make awful software. Avoid like the plague!