Hauppauge HD PVR

Recording encrypted HD channels has been the topic of hot discussion for several years now. While the cable companies claim their proprietary CableCard is the solution, many are left in the dark because of licensing restrictions.

Thankfully, Hauppauge recently demoed their HD PVR device at CES 2008 which hopes to fill this gap.

The HD PVR can connect to high definition cable TV or satellite TV set top box receivers, and uses it’s on-board H.264 hardware encoder to record high definition TV programs in an ISO standard HD H.264 AVC format in real time. The connections to the set top boxes are made via component cables, also referred to as ‘YPrPb’ or the red/blue/green connectors on HD set top boxes.

Other points of interest from the SnapStream Blog post are:

• Approximate cost is $250
• The ‘HD PVR’ name may change before launch
• Expected April or May 2008 Release
• On-The-Fly 1080p encoding
• H.264 Encoding
• Compression data rates between 1Mb/s and 25Mb/s

Hauppauge is the leading developer and manufacturer of broadcast capture products for personal computers. MonolithMC, Inc. uses Hauppauge capture cards in all their products due to their excellent quality in addition to their strong Linux support. Hopefully the ‘HD PVR’ follows suite and can provide a new set of upgrades to the current Monolith lineup.