Hauppauge Pioneers Consumer-grade USB Component Capture (MPAA on Kill Mode)

We've had affordable USB capture for S-video & composite for like a decade, but the equivalent for component input has been limited to professional level products. Until now. Hauppauge at CES 2008 was demoing what they called the HD PVR, which is basically a USB PVR that takes component source and convert it into H.264 AVC in real time.

This means a lot to a lot of folks who have problems saving HDTV content from their TiVO and DirecTV set top boxes onto the PC. Since the tuner is still outside the control of PC, Hauppague HD PVR comes with an IR blaster which changes the channels on your behalf. Bundled software takes care of the scheduled recordings. In addition to ISO H.264 compatibility, the HD PVR can encode AVCHD files for playback on PS3 and other Blu-ray players. We just aren't sure if the preparations of the AVCHD is done on the hardware layer or software, but we are definitely sure the HD PVR will get no blessing from Vista MCE and MPAA, unlike the DirecTV version that provides some degree of content encryption.