Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR High Definition Personal Video Recorder
by HAUPPAUGE
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Category: CE
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Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: HAUPPAUGEAudio: English (Original Language)
Format: CD
Platform: Windows
Model: 1212
Product features:
- High-definition personal video recorder records directly from cable TV and satellite set top boxes at up to 1080i
- Records in AVCHD format for burning Blu-ray DVD discs
- Includes Hauppage's WinTV scheduler to schedule TV recordings, and built-in IR blaster to automatically change TV channels
- Standard definition composite and S-Video inputs lets you digitize your old home video tapes directly from VCR
- Record: Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3 and Game Play
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR High Definition Personal Video Recorder
Customer Review: Not so good for live or timeshifting TV but good for recording to PC
Summary: 3 Stars
I note many people find the HD PVR to work very well for capturing video from console games and are happy with it for that purpose. I tried to use the HD PVR to watch and capture satellite and cable HDTV on my PC. Quick summery - It worked but barely and is not even close to acceptable for this use.
For years I have used cable HD TV tuners designed for the PC, such as Autumnwave's GT (now defunct) and SiliconDust HDHomeRun HDHR-T1-US Single Networked High Definition Digital Television (Windows7 Certified / Compatible) ATSC and clear QAM tuner. These tuners provide outstanding image quality and performance, fully integrated into Windows Media Center. They work in a way indistinguishable from a hardware PVR. This week we switched our household from Comcast cable to DirecTV, so these tools became obsolete and I needed something to provide the same functionality for my PC with the new satellite box. I like to have TV in a window on the PC monitor so I can switch my attention back and forth when I want. I could use a TV or monitor with PIP, but the HD PVR offers the additional functionality of my PC cable TV tuners - recording directly to a PC HDD - obviating a PVR set top box for time-shifting.
So, I bought an HD PVR from Amazon warehouse, a "used - like new" discounted unit that shipped and arrived quickly. It was obviously "used". The original box was beaten up and the component cable was defective in one lead. However, I got it to work and tested it with my current cable HD box.
The HD PVR will accept, display and record the component output of set top boxes at 1080i. Even though my new DirecTV box will output 1080p, at least on some PPV movies, and I would prefer the HD PVR did as well, I've been watching 1080i with my cable box tuners for years with Windows Media Center (with Windows 7 version most recently) and have been extremely happy with that. So, I had hopes for the PVR. With Hauppauge's most recent driver, the HD PVR integrates well into Windows 7 (or Vista) Media Center. I tested it with my Comcast cable box's component video and optical audio output. It was not hard to set up and it "worked". However, the HD PVR was over all unacceptable for this purpose. Here are the problems I encountered:
- The image quality sucked. Even set at the best quality on my very fast system (Win 7 Ultimate with an I5-750, 4 GB RAM, ATI 5770, Intel SSD and Sata 3GB/sec HDD), the image displayed a lot of compression and deinterlacing/motion artifacts in Win 7 Media Center that I never saw with the earlier PC cable tuners. Static screens could look very nice, but once things began to show motion, the image quality went down dramatically. I did not experience this with my PC cable tuners. UPDATE 01/20/11: I've reinstalled the HD PVR with my new satellite system. The image quality is just fine now. I'm not sure why I had problems before. There are a few minor glitches when it is "tuning" and it did lock up once today (changing channels fixed that). Anyway, image quality is no longer a complaint.
- Channel changing was horribly slow. The HD PVR uses an IR blaster to control your set top box. It worked, but the HD PVR and Win 7 Media Center would blank out during the 15 seconds or so this took and display a message noting a lost and then weak signal. The set top box would change channels quickly enough, but the bulk of the 15 seconds was consumed by the HD PVR having to seemingly restart. The PC cable tuners I had used previously tuned directly and could switch channels seamlessly in a second or so. UPDATE 01/20/11: While all this is true, Hauppauge has a note about it in the release notes for the Media Center driver update. The H.264 stream has to restart when channels are changed, so there is about a 15 second lapse while it goes through this, and this triggers the weak signal warning. Too bad. It sounds like there is no hope of remedying this.
- Sage TV supports the HD PVR, but I found other serious problems when I tried to use that as an alternative to Win 7 Media Center. Image quality was even worse. Sage allows some tweaking of codecs and deinterlacing. No matter how much I fiddled with that, the image quality sucked.
- Pausing, rewinding, fast forward control was downright awful. Trying to use them to time-shift live TV was asking for trouble with horrible image stuttering, loss of sound, freezing. Absolutely putrid performance compared to the cable tuners like the Homerun HD which worked very well. UPDATE 01/20/11: Well, this seems to have largely cleared up as well. There still are some glitches, but it is working fairly well.
I could go on, but that's enough to completely kill any hopes of using the HD PVR with cable or satellite HDTV set top boxes. (UPDATE 01/20/11: I may keep it now that it is working better as a PC hard drive based satellite box PVR so I can time-shift and record shows on my PC as I wanted to do) For cable sources I strongly recommend the Silicon Dust Homerun HD which comes in single or dual tuner models. It will only tune clear QAM (unencrypted) cable channels (and over-the-air channels). If you want to tune all cable channels, you would need something that would incorporate cablecard, like the very new Ceton InfiniTV 4: [...]
This is similar to my experience with other Hauppauge products - the hardware boasts features that should be very useful but the implementation is significantly lacking and crude.
UPDATE 01/08/11: I have used this to transfer videos from my cable and satellite HD boxes. Using the component output of these boxes, the HD PVR, using the included Arcsoft software did a nice job. It captured these files at their original 1080i resolution with 5.1 DD sound, and playback of these files was flawless, especially after fiddling with the deinterlace settings in the ATI catalyst center for my ATI HD 5770 video card. I still don't believe there is much I could do to improve its performance as a TV in Windows Media Center (see my 01/20/11 updates above for better news about this), but for transferring videos, including copies of premium/PPV files via component at up to 1080i to your HDD for playback later, this is an excellent tool.
FINAL UPDATE 01/21/11: Today Media Center failed to see the Hauppauge "tuner" in live TV mode. I ran through the setup again, but it still failed. IR blaster did not work either. It's not stable enough for me. It's going back.
Description of Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR High Definition Personal Video Recorder
The HD-PVR from Hauppauge is the world's first High-Definition video recorder for making real-time H.264 compressed recordings at resolutions up to 1080i. HD-PVR records component video from cable TV and satellite set top boxes, with a built-in IR blaster to automatically change TV channels for scheduled recordings. Audio is recorded using AAC or Dolby Digital. The recording format is AVCHD, which can be used to burn Blu-ray DVD disks. Two hours of HD recordings, recorded at 5 Mbist/sec, can be burnt onto a standard 4.7 GB DVD-R or DVD-RW disk for playback on a Blu-ray DVD player. The HD PVR's amazing recording quality allows personal archival recordings of your favorite high definition TV programs from any component video HD set top box. The HD PVR also has standard definition composite and S-Video inputs so you can record your old home video tapes into an AVHCD format for creating Blu-ray recordings. Other features include recording high definition video at up to 1080i resolution, 720P or VGA/D1. Includes HD software video player so you can playback recordings to your PC screen. NTSC, PAL, and SECAm support. IWorks with Windows XP and Vista. It does not have an Australian power supply.Digital Cameras & Photo Categories
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