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
Final Thoughts
Obviously the Colossus still has some rough edges. Ideally, all HTPC and technology in general would work without issue, but unfortunately that’s not the case, particularly in this market. In context, it is regrettably normal for early drivers on devices like the Colossus to have problems, including much greater stability issues than observed with this device. Even the 8.3% recording fail rate is well below what I experienced with the original HD PVR during the first months of use.
Clearly Hauppauge has work to do, both in improving recording quality and driver stability under extreme duress. However, component (YPbPr) + S/PDIF (TOSLINK) and HDMI capture options, alongside greater reliability than even the original HD PVR can currently provide, makes the Colossus is a worthy successor in this space.
If you’re after hardware that just works, you might want to hold off a few more months to let the drivers (and the HTPC community) work out some of the remaining kinks. If you’re part of that community, or just an A/V enthusiast, the Colossus is a nice option to add to the list.
Pros:
- Native resolution capture for 480i, 720p and 1080i with Dolby Digital 5.1
- HDMI support for those with STB that do not use HDCP
- PCIe format
- Component (YPbPr) and S/PDIF (TOSLINK) pass-through
Cons:
- Not all recordings are watchable
- Software/hardware bundle adds unnecessary cost with not additional value for DVR use
- No HDMI pass-through
- BSOD when continuously recording for more than sixteen hours
- Full height card leaves low-profile HTPC users out
Thanks to Hauppauge for providing the review sample.
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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.