Finally A HD Recorder For The PC!

Hauppauge 1212 HD PVR

Introduction
For quite some time I've been ask how to take HD recordings off of a HD DVR and until this device came along there was no answer.  But that is changed with the Hauppauge HD PVR video capture device.  PVR is really a bit misleading as it only functions as a HD capture device. Now it uses component video, either 720p or 1080i for HD recording, rather than HDMI or DVI due to the copy protection restrictions, but the quality of the recordings is very good.

What You Get
In addition to the capture unit box it self, the package comes with a set of component+audio cables, a remote control, a IR emmitter, a USB cable and the software disk that contains the device driver and ArcSoft software.

Setup
Setup is very easy.  Basically the system is designed for you to disconnect the component+audio cables from your HDTV input (assuming that's how you are hooked up) and reconnect them to the input jacks on the capture unit.  Then, using the component+audio cables furnished connect them between the capture box output jacks and the HDTV input jacks you just disconnected.  At this point the component signal will go through the capture box so it will need to be powered up and turned on.  I leave mine on at all times.

Note: If your HDTV is using a DVI or HDMI connection for your HD signal from a cable or satellite DVR, you will just connect the component outputs of the DVR to the input jacks of the capture box.  It may be necessary to reconfigure the output of your DVR as many DVRs will not output on both the digital (DVI/HDMI) and analog (component) outputs at the same time.  If this is the case you will need to either use the component inputs on your HDTV or reconfigure your cable/satellite DVR when you want to record.

The capture box will also allow the use of digital audio in lieu of the analog stereo audio via an optical cable.  There is an optical output should it be needed for a surround receiver.

Software Installation
The software provided in addition to the required device drivers is the ArcSoft Media Extream software.  In addition to the capture module software, it has the ArcSoft Digital Theater player and a special converter software module that will allow creation of regular DVD discs that will play in HD on a Blu-ray player.  Since a standard DVD will only hold about 30 minutes of HD video material, I find the converter to have limited usefulness.

Operation
The capture operation is fairly straight forward.  There are a minimum of setup parameters needed to enter, the capture elapsed time and then clicking the Capture button to begin the recording.  Once recording there is only the stop recording button, so pausing during commercials is not possible.  After the recording is finished, I use h264ts_cutter software to cut out the commercials.  Hint: If the file extention is .M2TS it will need to be changed to .TS for the h264ts_cutter to reconize the file properly. This can be done via the rename, it does not have to be recorded as a .TS file.

PVR Setup of the Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR Video Capture device
Now here it gets a bit tricky. I mentioned there was an IR emitter included in the package. The purpose of this emitter is to allow your computer to take control of your satellite receiver or cable box by sticking the IR emitter over the set top box IR sensor. Once configured, you will be able to schedule recording from a guide and the scheduler software will change the channel to the station specified automatically and start a capture. The scheduler uses the titantv.com website and you must create an account with them to take advantage of the guide scheduling feature.

Configuring the IR emitter software is fairly straight forward as you select your cable or satellite service and set top box from drop down menus. Some set top box selections will have several IR codes and you may need to click through them until you find the one that works. If that is unsuccessful there is the capability for you to “teach” the software your remote using the advanced configuration selection.

My first try was to use my Zenith tuner that receives over the air HDTV broadcasts. Turns out they didn’t provide any way to select sub channels, so trying to change to 11.1 or 11-1 is not possible. As far as I know the scheduler will not work with a tuner that requires sub channel selection. That’s not going to be a problem with cable boxes though as they use different channel numbers for their HD channels, like here in Houston channel 2 is the SD channel and channel 312 is the HD version. On my U-verse box channel 2 SD is channel 1002 for the HD version.

Since the Zenith receiver was not going to work I moved to the U-verse set top box thinking that since it is a fairly new technology box there may not be codes for it. To my surprise not only was there a code for the box, but titantv.com has a listing for U-verse. So I set up a new account for titantv.com so it wouldn’t intefere with my other account I use with the MyHD OTA tuner in another PC.

Scheduling Using The Guide 
To use the titantv.com guide for scheduling your recordings you set up an account using the software supplied with the Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR Video Capture device provided. That not only sets up the titantv.com account, but also will tell the scheduler software your user name and password selected for the titantv.com site for automatic log on. To select programming for recording you need to configure the titantv.com so it will display your particular guide for your service provider. Also during this configuration you select the DVR you are using. I used WinTV since the Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR Video Capture device was not one of the choices and that seemed to work just fine.

Once you get the titantv.com account set up and configured, to select programs for recording you go to the site and display the TV listings. Assuming you had selected a DVR during the configuration process you will see a red dot to the right of the program name. Clicking on this red dot will set the program in the schedule to be recorded.

Scheduling Manually
To schedule a recording manually the Scheduler program is used. I would suggest putting an icon on your desktop for the WinTV Scheduler, otherwise it is located in Start>All Programs>Hauppauge TV. Once run you fill in the information by selecting the Add Program button. Note the program name will be the file name, so if you want to use the program’s name you fill it in, otherwise the software will supply a name. You can set up recurring recordings to record one time only, every day or once a week on a particular day. Duration is also entered along with the starting time.

Remote Scheduling
This is a pretty slick feature that will allow you to remotely schedule the PVR recording from any remote location via a computer connected to the Internet. To enable the feature you need to run the TitanTV Remote Scheduler program. That will set a background program to run on your PVR computer. That program will check your titantv.com account to see if there are any recordings to be done periodically. When you call up your titantv.com account on the remote computer you can select a program to be recorded via the guide, but instead of selecting the red dot as you would on the PVR computer, you click in the program name area of the rectangle. That will bring up a pop up window where the Remote Schedule button will be clicked. That will have the browser send the scheduling information to your account at titantv.com. The next time your PVR computer Remote Scheduler software checks your titantv.com account the program will be scheduled.

Results
The video quality of the recording is very good.  I record at 1080i and 9 mbps with excellent results.  Of course the quality does not match Blu-ray, but is every bit as good as broadcast HD quality.  Hard disk usage is around 3 GB per hour using the 1080i and 9 mbps, so a large capacity drive is very useful.  I use external USB drives so I can transport the recording from computer to computer.

Conclusion
While not a perfect solution because the software user interface could be more like TiVo, the Hauppauge 1212 HD DVR video capture device is the next best thing for HD recording on a PC.  For unloading a HD DVR, maybe the only thing.