Hauppauge Colossus: HD PVR with HDMI Support
by Andrew Van Til on April 14, 2011 5:40 PM EST- Posted in
- HTPC
- Home Theater
- Hauppauge
System Impact
While recording quality is critical, it cannot be the only criteria used to measure a “tuner”. We performed some additional testing to assess the overall impact on a typical HTPC system when using the Colossus. It is more difficult to create a “worst case” environment with a full height card than would be possible if it were low-profile, since we can’t put the Colossus into some of the smaller HTPC cases. However, we did try to simulate use in a hotter chassis by utilizing the highest TDP CPU we had on hand as well as removing all but one of the case fans in the Ahanix D4 used in testing. Here are the specs for our test HTPC; this is hardly state-of-the-art, but it works well for our purposes.
| HTPC System Specifications | |
| Case | Ahanix D4 (Modified for better cooling) |
| Cooling | SilenX 60mm (Exhaust) |
| PSU | Antec EarthWatts 380 |
| CPU | Intel Q6600 (4x2.4GHz 105W TDP) with retail HSF |
| Motherboard | ASUS PK5-Pro |
| RAM | 4GB (2x2GB) ADATA DDR2-800 |
| Storage | 500GB Samsung F1 (7200RPM) |
| GPU | NVIDIA GT 430 |
| Optical | Lite-On iHOS104-04 |
| OS | Windows 7 32-bit |
With our test setup, we measured five temperatures at sixty-minute intervals while recording HD content. The five points we measures are the system (chipset), CPU, hard drive, and case, and the surface temperature of the ViXS encoding chip on the Colossus. System, CPU, and hard drive numbers were captured using SpeedFan, while internal case temperature was measured with a thermometer placed inside the case. We used an infrared thermometer to check the ViXS chip (after briefly removing the top of the case).
As we can see from the graph above the Colossus has almost no thermal impact in its environment, with the only significant gains measured by the hard drive and the card itself—both understandable given that is where the majority of recording load is realized. While temperatures weren’t noticeably impacted, we also checked system power use.
| System Power Draw | ||
| Baseline | Colossus Installed | |
| Idle | 68.5W | 76.1W |
| Recording | N/A | 77.1W |
Taking a look at power usage, the system’s draw was measured at the wall with a P3 Kill-A-Watt EZ P4460. We checked power draw first without the Colossus, then installed it and checked idle and recording power use. I was somewhat surprised by the initial difference (7.6W) after installing the card, but after looking at the results while recording where the delta between the two states is probably due to additional hard drive load it appears that the card does not utilize a low power idle state when not capturing data.
Having had a somewhat rough experience with the original HD PVR’s stability, we put the Colossus through a series of extended stress tests. The good news is that I was not able to reproduce the lockup problems that plagued its predecessor. Unfortunately, the device consistently caused BSODs (Blue Screen of Death) after sixteen to twenty hours of continuous recording. The conditions required to reproduce this issue are uncommon for HTPC DVR use so it is unlikely that most users would experience it. However, it does make the device currently unsuitable for some scenarios like a security system. We notified Hauppauge of the issue and provided a memory dump to help isolate the root cause. Hopefully they can trace the problem and patch it in the near future.
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silverblue - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
I'll rephrase that... I bought a card in 2004 which suddenly became unsupported, so there were no new drivers for it even before Vista came out. It's actually one of my reasons for not migrating to Windows 7 before now, believe it or not.djfourmoney - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
I am targeting this. Finally a card I can use with DirecTV HD box! My lack of money and employment will prevent me from being an early adopter, which is fine. I can wait for the kinks to be sorted out before purchase.I also agree that a "White Box" version of the card would be welcomed with a reduced price especially if your going to using it with Sage TV or Windows Media Center.
HDMI to HDMI will completely simplify my HTPC setup, though I would still use DV-I (or VGA) for Video and Toslink for audio out to my HT in-a-box.
digitalgriffin - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
After buying two different versions of their cards, and FIGHTING continously with the drivers, and inconsistent driver updates and locations, I threw them in the trash as a lesson learned. They NEVER fixed their drivers properly.Their reputation is permenantly damaged with me. And this article just renforces how they really don't care about creating a stable product.
Consider the Hauppage driver quality to be as bad, and always as bad as the ATI Rage days.
Golgatha - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
They have good long term support, but I will agree that their software bundles and drivers are just awful.chasmetz - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
MediaPortal will support the Colossus in the upcoming 1.2 Beta -> http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/mediaportal-1-ta...bwooster0 - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
I had a problem with an HD-PVR that was out of warranty and they fixed it and sent it back to me for free.I am using two Colossus cards. One in an Win 7 box and one in an XP box. They are both working fine but the XP box is doing a better job of recording SD stuff (this might be a sat box set up issue)
There support has been good for me.
Sivar - Friday, April 15, 2011 - link
I've been looking for a good TV card. Hopefully the BSODs are just immature drivers.It is a bit ironic to use a poor image format for the pictures in an article which discusses image quality in a product. You may find this OSS program useful: It helps choose an appropriate image format for best quality at a given size. http://code.google.com/p/imageguide/
For screen captures, JPG is not it.
rcpinheiro - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
Any news about the strippers? ;-)Obviously, I mean the HDCP strippers that many expected to appear right after the master key was revealed?
Penti - Sunday, April 17, 2011 - link
They existed long before. http://www.hdfury.com/ has been around a long time now, output from that one is component or RGBHV (VGA basically) though. Obviously alot of others are around. Problem with some of them though is that they might get their keys revoked. So far that hasn't happened to HDfury.Any way you might want a HDMI-splitter as you don't have any HDMI-passthrough feature on the Colossus.
Casper42 - Monday, April 25, 2011 - link
I think what hes really asking, and what I want to know as well, is how hard would it be to use a device like this one and the Cracked HDMI information to basically make a card that spoofs HDCP and will essentially allow you to record anything you want over the incoming HDMI port?I would love to see such a card as fiddling with all the cable cards and stupid rules imposed by Cable Labs is absolutely ridiculous when you can hop on your favorite BitTorrent site and find the content in HD with the commercials stripped like 24 hours after it aired on TV.
One of these days they will understand the battle is one they are going to lose every time and just make it easier for us the consumer rather than thinking they can prevent piracy. I would gladly record locally with commercials as opposed to using BT, but as it stands now, BT is so much easier.