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Hauppauge have been creating a plethora of TV oriented products now for many years and today we are looking at their Colossus video recording card which can capture real time H.264 compressed recordings at resolutions up to 1080i. Is this ideal for capturing video console footage?
Hauppauge currently make several products that can record video such as their USB based HD PVR, an external device which compliments the PCIe card we are testing today.
Colossus features:
- Record high definition video using H.264 video encoding with digital audio. Colossus is an internal PCI Express board, full height, and runs with Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.
- Includes a built-in high quality hardware H.264 high definition encoder, for high performance, high quality video recordings
- Record high definition video at up to 1080i resolution. Also records standard definition video. Record at datarates from 1Mbs to 20Mbs.
- Record your game play in HD (up to 1080i) with component video and digital audio (optical) from Xbox360 or PS3 game consoles.
- Record your favorite TV programs from HD cable TV and satellite set top boxes. Colossus connects to most HD cable TV and satellite TV receivers with component video and optical digital audio. Stereo audio inputs are supported, too.
- Burn your video game play or your favorite TV programs onto AVCHD disks in high definition using standard DVD media. These AVCHD disks can be played back on a blu-ray DVD player. Up to 2 hours of HD AVCHD video can be recorded on standard DVD-R disks at 5MBits/sec.
- Create HD recordings which can be played back on the Xbox 360 and PS3
- Includes Hauppauge's WinTV v7 TV application for automatic recording of TV programs from cable or satellite set top boxes
- Includes Arcsoft ShowBiz to record video game play. Burn HD disks or upload video game play in HD to YouTube
- Colossus has component video plus stereo and digital audio pass through, to allow HD recording and viewing at the same time.
- NTSC and PAL support
- HDMI input port included. If you have an un-encrypted HDMI video source, such as a digital SLR, you can record directly from this source.
- Note: most cable and satellite TV receivers do not support un-encrypted HDMI video.
- Includes IR blaster and IR receiver/learn cable. Colossus can “learn” your cable TV or satellite remote control and can automatically change the channel on your set top box.
Cool ideal, and its much better than USB. It just seems rather expensive to me, but maybe im out of date on pricing.
Interesting idea. I could never get hauppauge products to work, the last time i bought one, it drove me nuts. I had a digital tv box from them and the software was dire.
Nifty gadget, but I wouldn’t really use it. I think hauppauge might run into a problem as more of the set top boxes such as sky etc have already got recording options.
Perhaps its useful if you want to record to PC for uploading elsewhere….
Never really looked at one of hauppauges products before, although they stock them in our local ‘tech supermarket’. They are quite expensive, generally.
I have to agree, I bought a hauppauge tv tuner years ago and the damn thing never worked right from day one. Lost all faith in this company.