Hauppauge HD PVR Gaming Edition Review

1. Introduction2. Hauppauge HD PVR Gaming Edition3. Hauppauge HD PVR Gaming Edition (Super High Res Gallery)4. The Software & Capturing video5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

Hauppauge bundle ArcSoft ShowBiz with the product, a fairly capable capturing and editing package.

The software disc is multiple language …

… and contains both the drivers and ArcSoft ShowBiz software.

The software instructs the user to turn on and connect the HD PVR Gaming Edition. Then the drivers can be installed. This takes a couple of minutes.

The software has a handful of options for encoding rates and video standard display.

The default settings seemed spot on to us, although if you want to record at a lower resolution with lesser quality bitrate, there are options to configure the software here. There are several options also available for video rendering, as well as the option to use hardware acceleration. We experienced no problems when enabling hardware acceleration while using a HD6970 or GTX580.

The software detected we had a Playstation 3 connected, although we need to change the output settings on the console before the input signal would work. This is the only tricky bit of the setup.

If like us, you use your Playstation 3 over HDMI, then you must also connect this Hauppauge component cable. We had the Playstation 3 connected simultaneously to a television via HDMI and the component output on the Playstation 3 to the PC via the Hauppauge HD PVR Gaming Edition. There is a time limit for confirmation when changing the video output system on the Playstation 3, so it is best loading the ArcSoft ShowBiz software beforehand.

If you fail to get a signal via the HD PVR, don’t panic. Without manual intervention the Playstation 3 will revert back to the HDMI signal shortly, reactivating the display on your television.

Be sure not to select 1080p, as the component cable won't handle it and the screen will go blank.

The video above is an .MT2S file, taken directly from the Windows 7 system from the Hauppauge HD PVR. We didn't even recode it to include our watermark as we were very impressed with the native quality from the HD PVR. This is significantly better than the video we managed to get from the Hauppauge Colossus in July.

Hauppauge have managed to remove the noticeable lag between signal and computer which is helpful when playing a game and recording it directly to the computer.

Become a Patron!