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Hauppauge HD PVR anyone?
http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=18249
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Author:  jjoshua [ Fri May 02, 2008 11:46 am ]
Post subject:  Hauppauge HD PVR anyone?

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

Anyone getting one?

Author:  nharris [ Fri May 02, 2008 1:23 pm ]
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Hauppauge has provided pre-release units to SageTV, BeyondTV, GB-PVR and maybe other too. Those three announced HD-PVR support before they started shipping. I can't find one reference to anyone in the MythTV crowd having one. I'm guessing there is some legal paperwork those proprietary software vendors had to sign to get their unit. Plus, historically, Hauppauge is not too concerned about the Linux crowd. Too bad... we buy a ton of their hardware.

Author:  borgednow [ Sun May 04, 2008 3:10 pm ]
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Wow. that would suck.

I was checking out their digital pci cards, to replace my old hauppage analog 500's, but if they are gonna ignore the myth market, I won't.

Specifically, I was checking out http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/ ... r1800.html but that's only 1 digital tuner and 1 analog anyway.

Author:  cecil [ Sun May 04, 2008 3:39 pm ]
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The will be MythTV support for the HD PVR.

Author:  nharris [ Sun May 04, 2008 4:36 pm ]
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Wow Cecil... do you have some inside info? Or just that much confidence in the Myth crowd? After all the reverse engineering of the past, I think it will probably materialize too. I'm just not sure how long it will be.

Author:  cecil [ Sun May 04, 2008 6:02 pm ]
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No, I have no inside info. The fellow that has written the drivers for that other OS has also written the Linux drivers. He has stated so in #mythtv-users on irc.freenode.net.

Author:  jorin [ Mon May 05, 2008 10:05 am ]
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Hauppauge has been a supporter of the Linux community for a long time. I don't see it stopping anytime soon. Though I wish there was more support or I had the skills.

The HD PVR is an important device to all the cable and satellite subscribers that want to get their HD content into MythTV and other softwares. With more and more restrictions placed on us there have been some great devices to take advantage of the loopholes. This is one of them.

I happened to be standing in line along with one of Hauppauge's developers while waiting for the keynote last June at the Apple developers conference. We talked about everything Hauppauge, AppleTV, MythTV, WinMCE, etc.. I did everything I could to push for better Linux support. The more they support us the more we are likely to buy. Reading between the lines I think he was saying that Linux is a small percentage of their sales. Plus the fact that they can't easily track the numbers. So maybe we need to speak up.

Author:  BarryMead [ Wed May 07, 2008 10:52 am ]
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Has anyone receive their Hauppauge HD-PVR 1212 yet?

Author:  jorin [ Wed May 07, 2008 3:59 pm ]
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Can the HD-PVR output from Myth? The device appears to be able to pass-through on component. I'm not finding info on output.

Author:  jorin [ Wed May 07, 2008 5:17 pm ]
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jorin wrote:
Can the HD-PVR output from Myth? The device appears to be able to pass-through on component. I'm not finding info on output.


Sounds like there may be "licensing" issues that would prevent this from happening. But the linux community may be able to?

Author:  ChapmanI [ Thu May 08, 2008 11:31 pm ]
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I believe the "pass through" capability is simply to allow it to sit between your cable/satellite box and your TV. When commanded, it will encode the signal (I think in either H.264 or VC-1) and pass that stream via USB to the computer. The encoder chip just leeches the signal from the component pass through.

When you're not recording, you wouldn't want to disconnect it from the cable/satellite box (and re-connect the STB to the TV) just to watch live TV. Or for that matter, be required to have an expensive, dedicated cable/satellite HD box just for recording. Most people would want something that just sits between the (non Knoppmyth) STB and the TV. Hook it up once and forget it.

And I'm also sure that it does the "pass through" electrically, all the time, regardless of if it's recording or not. I'd bet it even works if you disconnect the power to the HD PVR.

This device had no Decoding capabilities at all, only Encoding. It has no on board tuner. It has no on board storage (other than a little flash for firmware). It needs the computer to store what it spews out, otherwise it's just wasted electrons. It needs the external material provided via component, S-video, composite video, optical sound, or stereo.

Do we know for sure that SageTV, BeyondTV, and GB-PVR got pre-release units? Perhaps all they got were the communication specs for the HD PVR. (ie commands to set recording format, send IR Blaster commands, start recording, and whatever was needed to accept the raw stream from the box).

(When I originally wrote this last night, I couldn't post it due to my net connection going down. I now have the answer to my own question via another post. In Brent Evens "Geek Tonic" Blog he says, "I've heard from representatives of SageTV and Snapstream (BeyondTV) and both of them seem to be as ready for the device as possible, but word is Hauppauge is still working on the drivers to get them just right." In my mind that pretty definitively says neither Sage or Beyond have pre-production units.)

In other words they probably got similar stuff required for any other USB capture device. This box has NO tuner and is probably not that much different (other than the input connectors, encoder chip and blaster) than the Plextor ConvertX or Pinnacle Studio Moviebox Plus.

I've never seen anybody even suggest that a HD Homerun can playback recordings. It just tunes the station, and passes the raw data to the recording box, (though admittedly two at a time from it two tuners.) It's just another input device. The HD PVR is just that - a way to stream encoded video to the computer. Why would you expect it to be an output device?

It seems to me that a lot of people just look at the product name, and run off on a wild tangent of speculation. They've not read the reports from CES, the product specifications at the Hauppauge site, any of the lengthy discussions of it stretching back to about November.

As I said above, the HD PVR is not that far removed from other external encoding devices. It differentiates itself by two unique features. The first being component video input as opposed to the usual composite and S-video (though it has both of those too). The second being that it hardware encodes to H.264 and VC-1 as opposed to the usual Mpeg2. So no, it won't slice, dice and make julienne fries. It won't make a martini either. But it should be a damn fine way to encode Hi-Def, non OTA video -- the stuff normally encryped by our satellite and cable companies.

Also note that shipments have been delayed till mid May for the earliest orders, and end of May for later ones. I know someone will claim that as evidence that the product will never happen -- that the big media companies are squashing it. The stated reason in an email to people who have pre-ordered it, is that there has been a production delay in the plastic cases.

If you recall, at CES the anticipated shipping date was mid April. When that date was pushed back to May, it was because there were some design and production delays from their case manufacturer in China. On small run items, it is quite common for Chinese plastic molding companies to miss deadlines, or have initial quality problems.

The two shipping dates imply to me, that the demand was higher than they expected. That is, the first run of boards, was probably ordered and manufactured months ago. There are people who purchased in the first 24 hrs, whose order numbers fall in the second shipment block. Sure sounds like they needed to make more boards. It might also have required a larger run of the cases than the initial order, hence the delay.

Of course much of what I've said is my own speculation. With all the months of reading I've done on the Hauppauge HD PVR, these are conclusions that seem to make sense.

Author:  jorin [ Fri May 09, 2008 2:39 pm ]
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Here is what I found on the SnapStream blog concerning decoding from a file.

# 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)

http://blogs.snapstream.com/2008/02/07/ ... ge-hd-pvr/

If I am reading this correctly the Ambarella chip not only encodes to H.264 but also could decode from files stored on the computer.

But this is a blog and may not contain correct info.

Author:  nharris [ Sat May 10, 2008 7:53 am ]
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cecil wrote:
No, I have no inside info. The fellow that has written the drivers for that other OS has also written the Linux drivers. He has stated so in #mythtv-users on irc.freenode.net.

That's great news!

Author:  hackmeister [ Thu May 29, 2008 6:10 am ]
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It's finally shipped:
http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2008/05/ ... d-pvr.html

No word from the streets regarding Linux support.

Author:  hackmeister [ Fri Jun 13, 2008 8:45 am ]
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Looks like the initial Linux driver is functioning:
http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_HD-PVR

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