Hauppauge HD-PVR Units Nearing Shipment
UPDATE: THE FIRST UNITS ARE SHIPPING 5/28 AND THE NEXT BATCH SHIP OUT THE FIRST WEEK OF JUNE 2008
As I mentioned at the end of April, the highly sought after Hauppauge HD-PVRs were delayed to Mid-May at best. The delay was due to production delays on the plastic cases for the HD-PVRs.
An administrator on the SageTV forums is reporting that the first set of Hauppauge HD-PVRs arrived at Hauppauge this Monday with their plastic cases. Qualification testing is underway at Hauppauge and the first set of pre-orders should be delivered once testing is complete. Note that nobody has said how many of these units have arrived at Hauppauge so Its possible that not all pre-orders will be shipped if there aren't enough units there yet. Estimated ship date for the first of these units will be next week (May 27th - 30th) sometime.
I'm anxious to see how these component video recorders perform on SageTV and Beyond TV, both of which have betas running with HD-PVR support built-in. I'll have a post in the next day or so with all of the facts I could gather on these devices so stay tuned. If you have any questions about the HD-PVR let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to find out and answer your questions in my next HD-PVR post.
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Anonymous
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7:59 AM, May 20, 2008
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D
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4:24 AM, May 21, 2008
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jakep_82
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3:15 PM, May 21, 2008
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Brent Evans
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3:23 PM, May 21, 2008
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jakep_82
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3:52 PM, May 21, 2008
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Brent Evans
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3:54 PM, May 21, 2008
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jakep_82
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4:24 PM, May 21, 2008
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hoopla
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6:54 PM, May 26, 2008
blog comments powered by DisqusWhy hasn't Hauppauge Posted the Manual?
Hi Brent,
Any chance any of your contacts can advise on UK availability?
Thanks
Dave
According to a few recent posts on the AVS Forums, the HD-PVR is going to downmix all sound to stereo with a supposed update later on to support 5.1. Have you heard anything about this? If true, this will be a MAJOR disappointment. I'm contemplating canceling my pre-order now.
jakep_82,
I've seen that post on the AVS forums and have no reason to believe it's untrue.
The e-mail the AVS forums is referring to does say the 5.1 support would be added, just not at initial release date. If this is a dealbreaker for you there's still time to cancel your pre-order.
I'm pretty disappointed, but I've already waited 6 weeks for my pre-order and I don't want to cancel now. I emailed Hauppauge just to confirm this will be added in a future software update, not a future hardware update. If they confirm it will be added via software, I won't cancel my pre-order. They really should clarify in the product description though. "AC-3 audio encoding" implies that it will accept DD5.1, not just PCM stereo.
Be sure and post a comment here to let me know what they confirm to you. Thanks!
From Dorothy at Hauppauge:
"The initial release won’t accept Dolby Digital 5.1 but we expect to have a downloadable software patch within the next 4 weeks or so that will fix this issue."
Not as bad as I originally though.
I don't really understand how this device is supposed to work. I see that I will be able to run component video through the device. I also see that there is a USB port. It has its own remote control, which is throwing me.
Is it a device that could run its own software (run without a connection to a computer) or as a peripheral device controlled by a computer (via USB). If it is the former, how would it get a channel guide? The specs don't list a hard drive, so it doesn't look like a standalone unit.
If it is the latter, is it supposed to respond to Windows Media Center, SageTV, MythTV, and others, or does it only interact with Hauppage's proprietary DVR software? Would it get a command from the computer to blast a channel change to my cable box, then the PC starts recording to its hard drive?
If it is a peripheral to some type of PC hardware, I suppose that the video signal will get captured via the component in and then get sent to the PC through USB??? If so, it appears there is no need for a video capture card?
This would act like the new ATI free standing HD video capture little boxes, just that it wouldn't have a cable card...it would just piggy back off of my TWC high definition cable box??? (thus skirting broadcast flag issues?) Am I getting this right?