There’s been a groundswell ofinterest 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 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.)
“…BeyondTV is just a cleaner interface, and has a few more bells and whistles built in…”
“…the DVR area is a space where there are a lot of contenders making products, but so far BeyondTV has topped the list of products I’ve tried.”
(A few days ago, Scott also wrote about his experiences Adding HDTV to his HTPC with Beyond TV and the HDHomeRun)
…And on chron.com’s TechBlog, Jim Thompson writes about how technology makes the superbowl more enjoyable and in the comments writes:
“For re-living a game, a PVR is a big plus. I have several of my alma mater’s big games from the past two seasons stored on my homebrew BeyondTV system.”
Two interesting threads going on in the SnapStream forums… The first one is about the 2009 transition to digital — since it this FCC-mandated transition only officially applies to antenna transmissions, does it mean anything for regular analog cable?
Another one that I just started: Have you ever watched a popular TV show streamed over the web on your laptop? How do you think this popular new way of delivering television shows will change traditional cable/satellite/antenna television?
Grant (btvfreak in the forums) has updated his how-to on using Beyond TV with the SiliconDust HDHomeRun to reflect changes that SiliconDust has made to their setup process.
For those that are new to building their own PC DVR, the HDHomeRun is a great TV tuner if you want to use Beyond TV to record the unencrypted channels on your digital cable feed. Our original (and now slightly outdated) how-to on using Beyond TV and the HDHomeRun can be found here.
Lead tester of all things SnapStream and self-proclaimed tech guru, Zack will give us an inside look at the thought process behind Beyond TV 4.7’s iTunes® Integration feature. To bring those of you who might be unaware of this feature up to speed, the iTunes® Integration feature allows Beyond TV users to automatically sync their recorded TV shows to their iPods and iPhones.
So, sit back and relax as Zack takes us down the unbeaten path where developers and testers come to amends with the technology that is iTunes® Integration.
SnapStream would like to thank all of the Beyond TV Users that participated in our Beyond TV 4.7 survey and congratulate Tom Gabriele. Tom was randomly selected as the lucky winner of an iPod Nano for completing our survey.
What started as a budding relationship, ended with an ugly break-up. According to techcrunch, NBC has packed its bags and has officially broken ties with iTunes. It may seem as though accessing your favorite NBC shows through iTunes is on an indefinite hiatus, but with Beyond TV’s iTunes integration feature there is no need to worry.
The iTunes integration, an add-on feature in 4.7, allows Beyond TV users to automatically sync their recorded shows, including NBC favorites Heroes, The Office, and Chuck, to their iPods and iPhones without a snag.
So, with NBC gone and iPods/iPhones craving video content, Beyond TV users are good to go with the Automatic Sync/H.264 iTunes integration feature.
Last week the guys over at Missing Remote wrote an in-depth and comprehensive review on the latest features of Beyond TV 4.7. Here are some of the highlights:
iTunes Integration:
This feature allows users to automatically sync their recorded shows from BTV to their iphone or ipod.
“Snapstream has done a great job with their initial offering of iTunes Auto-Syncing. Things are straight forward and easy to configure. Once you have configured everything and added the RSS feeds to your podcasts in iTunes, things will pretty much take care of themselves.�
Firefly Mobile:
This new application allows you to turn your iphone, smartphone, or PDA into a remote for your BTV.
“This can be a very handy way to get remote control access to a pc without having to buy an IR receiver and a remote. This could also be useful for those that have a touchscreen setup and want to use the second display/touchscreen to act as a remote control.�
Community Recordings:
Enabling community recordings allows for your BTV to automatically schedule and record the most popular shows as per the Beyond TV user community.
“I think the opportunity for this add-on to shine will be during the off season when I never know what’s decent on tv.â€?
Conclusion: “With all this new capability, BeyondTV continues to be a strong contender in the Home Theater PC PVR market. If you’re about to build your own HTPC, or you’ve been thinking about trying something different you should definitely give BeyondTV 4.7 a try.â€?
Lifehacker’s Adam Pash wrote an excellent article two years ago about how to install a PCI TV tuner card in your PC. Two years later, it’s still a great resource for anyone who’s never cracked open their PC before and wants to build their own DVR.
So head over to the SnapStream Store and get yourself a Beyond TV and Hauppauge HVR-1600 bundle (my recommendation because the HVR-1600 a) is a dual tuner TV card — you can record both one analog channel and one over-the-air digital channel at the same time, b) includes an IR blaster with code library, so you if you want to record from your digital cable or satellite signal, it’ll tune your set-top box, and c) has a hardwareMPEG-2 encoder, so the heavy lifting of encoding the analog signal is handled by the TV card and not by your computer’s CPU). And then use Adam’s trusty guide to get the TV tuner card installed. As Adam writes in the article:
Sound scary? Be not afraid. Installing hardware in your computer is not as difficult as it may seem. In fact, installing a PCI card is a relatively simple and painless process.
(And in case you’re reading this Adam: you should try the latest version of Beyond TV… we think you’ll like it.)
