From the SnapStream blog The Hauppauge HD PVR “in the lab” at SnapStream


Since there’s been some excitement about the upcoming Hauppauge HD PVR product, I thought I’d share some photographs of Hauppauge’s new product “in the lab” here at SnapStream:

see pretty pics of the prototype hauppauge HD PVR unit

Wow... just wow! http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/hd_pvr.html Finally an easy way to record HD program on to your PC using your satellite set top box or digital cable STB.

HD PVR 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 (YCrCb) 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.

more delicious product shots over at SHSpvr's hauppauge forum

also see engadget coverage of the HD PVR

Thanks to miller for the heads up!

Vista View has announced that they will be releasing the Saber DA-1N1-e PCIe dual tuner card this week. The Saber DA-1N1-e is a combination ATSC (digital/HDTV) tuner and ViXs chip hardware encoded analog tuner.


From the press release: Vista View introduces the Saber DA-1N1-Etm PCIe Combo tuner card. This tuner combines the best Analog tuner technology with the best Digital tuner technology. This PCIe tuner card is the almost twin sister of the Saber DA-1N1-I, introduced in mid July.

Both cards give you 2 tuners, 1 Digital and 1 Analog, on one card. On both cards the Analog portion has a high quality ViXS hardware encoder and both are Vista certified. The main difference is that the Saber DA-1N1-E has a PCIe interface and is ATX height. With this addition to the Saber line customers can choose PCIe or PCI and still have the same great quality combo tuner choices."

Read the rest of the VistaView Saber Press Release...

ATI is shipping Radeon HD 2400 & HD 2600 with HDMI/HDCP Goodness

"Both cards will also include the company's Unified Video Decoder (UVD), are based around a 65-nanometer chip, and will support HDMI and HDCP."

"There comes a time in a homeowners life that he realizes the importance of being able to play full high-definition content from his neighbor's house 5 doors down… wirelessly.

Never mind the fact that getting the needed 20mbit sustained wireless connection for HD inside of a single house is difficult. The prospect of playing Music, DVDs and even full resolution HDTV between houses is just too tempting.
"

You can read the rest of the story on how they did it over at the SnapStream Blog article Watch HDTV anywhere in the neighborhood (AKA: House to House wireless network for HDTV)

It's about two guys here at SnapStream and their adventures setting up cross-neighborhood wireless network so they could watch DVDs and HDTV (recorded with Beyond TV, natch) from each others houses.

SnapStream releases BeyondTV version 4.6.1, now with unencrypted QAM goodness!

Some exciting improvements (release notes):

- Library monitoring and performance improved.
- HDHomeRun (ATSC and QAM support) now supported.
- Serial tuning for DirecTV D11 Model 500 now supported.


Don't know what the heck "unencrypted QAM" is good for? Ask about it in our HDTV DVR topic forum :)

W00t! BeyondTV Release Candidate 4.61 has unencrypted QAM support and they could use your hand testing it.

That's awesome! I'm totally getting an HDhomerun now.

For those that are saying "Unencrypted QAM, huh? What?!" You cable company often provides local HD channels that aren't "scrambled" and a QAM enable ATSC/HDTV tuner can decode the digital signal and you can record/watch local HDTV channels.

This doesn't help with pay HDTV channels like ESPN, HBOHD, HDNET, etc... you'd need a cablecard for that, but it's still handy if you like HD content but are on a budget :)

Network HDTV Quality Tested

"The State of the Union address last night was a snoozer, but we HDTV gearheads had fun jumping between the networks, checking out which net was able to deliver the best HDTV signal from lens to screen. This was a notable occasion, because all the networks were using precisely the same feed—the same cameras, same everything—where the only difference was between the Capitol pool feed and the viewer.

We took an HD gander at NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and HDNet, to see who delivered the crispiest, most colorful and most gorgeous HDTV signal of all."

this is another pet peeve of mine (besides DRM, arg!) HDTV content that's handled poorly or compressed down somewhere along the chain... (either that or my TV is a PoS!)

Malbec in our forum pointed out a very interested sagetv forum thread about a CES announcement by SageTV

It looks like a pretty cool HDTV full sagetv network client is on it's way Think of it as being like a HiDef MediaMVP with full sagetv menus.

VidaBox announced HD Vista media center systems with CableCARD are slated to ship March 2007.

Continuing to be at the forefront of crystal clear and life-like video/audio playback, VidaBox CableCARD systems are engineered to allow a user to record two HD shows while playing back a third pre-recorded show, Blu-ray, HD DVD, high fidelity music, upscaled DVD, or digital picture slideshows. High definition content recorded from CableCARD can also be streamed and played back on connected XBox 360 systems.

Hat tip to Steven C and PVRwire

Gizmodo and Miller started a conversation on this in our forum regarding vidabox and cablecard PVRs in the future

Full press release continued after the fold

HowTO:Recording Cable HDTV on a Mac via FIREWIRE

"After a little research, I found that any Firewire-equipped Mac can be made into an HD-PVR for unencrypted content at the expense of an appropriate firewire cable. Apple even provides the necessary capture software that you need, provided that you know where to look."

irecord gui for Mac/OSX firewire digital cable recording

Hat tip PVRwire

You can get your digital HDTV cake but NOT eat it... Windows Vista Media Center CableCARD DRM & Vista unable to stream, convert CableCARD media

"users who prefer to roll their own Media Center box (like yours truly) will be left out of the option entirely -- support will only be available for CableLabs certified boxen, which home-rolled are, of course, not. Now we come to find out some even worse news about CableCARD and Vista: not only will you not be able to re-stream your high def media to other Windows machines (sorry, Vista capable Media Center Extenders only, i.e. the Xbox 360, and not much else), you won't even be able to transcode and sync to your PMC or other devices"

Engadget also has a look at the ATI's TV Wonder Digital Cable (CableCARD) Tuner hands-on

ATI announces two CableCard tuners

"ATI's new TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner is an OCUR (Open Cable Unidirectional Receiver) tuner, meaning it can accept CableCard signals and send them to your computer. Like the CableCard slots in the TiVo Series3, OCUR devices can accept digital cable signals, but cannot send, meaning you can't get advanced features like video on demand.

But you can record (HDTV) shows in Vista Media Center without a cable box and IR blaster."

Steve from VidaBox wanted to let byopvr users know that there's an exclusive video featuring their "DualHD" PVR/media center - the world's first Blu-ray & HD DVD system. With both HD formats on 1 systems plus PVR functionality, this system really "does it all!" :)

More info @CE Pro site

Why decide blue-ray or HD-DVD when you can have both? Put that in your HiDef pipe and smoke it Sony!

Hauppauge’s new HVR-950 works with Beyond TV

"Hauppauge’s latest TV tuner, the HVR-950, is a little USB stick that supports recording over-the-air HDTV. We’re happy to say that we’ve tested it with Beyond TV 4.4 and it works like a charm. So if you have an HVR-950, go ahead and download the 21-day trial of Beyond TV. And if you are new to using your PC for HDTV, check out our HDTV Setup Center.

The HVR-950 is Hauppauge’s first ATSC TV tuner in a very long time and their very first to include BDA drivers (BDA stands for “broadcast driver architecture” and it’s the way you have to write your TV tuner drivers for it to work with Beyond TV or any other PVR software out there). We’re glad to see Hauppauge getting into the game on HDTV tuners!"

previous Hauppauge WinTV HVR 950 coverage