Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR High Definition Personal Video Recorder

I am extremely pleased with the performance and quality of this HD Video Capture device. Notice I did not refer to this as an HD "PVR" because I am not using it for time-shifting/timer recording purposes.I bought this little gem to capture HD video that I'd previously recorded to my internal & external hard drives on Dish Network vip622 satellite PVR/receiver. I'm using the 1212 to "back up" my recordings so that I don't loose my collection should I choose to end my Dish Network service at some point. The recordings I've done so far have all resulted in excellent quality and I cannot detect any degradation in video or audio quality from the original Dish recordings. If you are looking for a device to record HD Satellite ... I highly recommend this HD PVR. For use as a PVR to record live shows or to use as a timer based recorder, I defer to others who have used the device in this manner. Although I am extremely pleased with this device, there are two "cons", 1) the device only comes with a quick start manual, for any other info/help, you are on your own, 2) the price of the device seems very high (probably because there are few competitive devices available). At this price I expected a clear and complete manual for successful operation instead of just a guide to "quick setup".My HT/PC/AV/Network set up:- 1212 input is Component video in & toslink (optical) audio in directly from my Dish Network vip622 receiver.- I am not using the "pass thru" component out or toslink (optical) out (I'm using splitters to route both video and audio directly to the 1212 and my Sony AV receiver.- 1212 is attached via USB to an MSI Wind Netbook (so definitely the 1212 can be connected to a low end PC) Note: I'm only using the 1212 as a capture device and I move all output to my other high end PCs for any editing, the video files are also moved to my NAS for playback using a Mediagate MG800HD network connected media player that is part of my HT setup.A few things that I've found to be true of the device as I'm using it:1. my first attempt at recording was a complete failure because I set the bit rate to max (13.5) variable and tried to record to .mp4 format. The resulting file was filled with artifacts and the audio was only 2 channel stereo. About 5 minutes into the recording, the audio suddenly got out of sync with the video ... bottom line, I deleted the file and tried again.2. my next several recording all turned out to be perfect, the video was a crisp as the original, and I was able to preserve the 5.1 audio in the original recording. To achieve this I set the recording format to .ts (instead of .mp4), set the bit rate back to the defaults (9.0 constant), turned off "Hardware Acceleration" and "View While Recording". The first two changes effected the settings inside the 1212, the latter two changes I did because I was using a Netbook as my "connected" PC that didn't have enough juice to handle the overhead. Caution: if you use .mp4 or .m2ts formats you will loose the 5.1 audio. Also be aware that recording in any HD format at 1920x1080 like I am doing will require a lot of storage space. Currently I have 5 PCs and a NAS so my network has about 13 terabytes of storage available.3. All my recordings have been manual and at first I was bothered by the seeming lag when I first started the recordings (clicking capture) but after checking the beginning of the recordings, they actually started the moment I hit "capture". It seems that only "pass thru" and/or the view on a PC shows this momentary lag, it is luckily not part of the recordings themselves. Since I'm not using "pass thru" connections, this is not a problem for me. Once you click "Stop" the file is on your hard drive.3. I've been very successful at editing the .ts files with a free tool called "Smart Cutter Portable". Using this program I am able to cut out commercials and such while preserving the high quality video and 5.1 audio. the tool does not re-encode the entire .ts file, it only needs to re-encode the start and end frames. Very slick, and recommended as a nice add on for the 1212. Again, I cannot comment on the Arcsoft software that is included because I haven't used it ... I will say though that there are much better (aka more user friendly and feature rich) "free" and "pay" tools available.I could write a book about this great device, but I won't ... let's just say that if, like me, you are looking for a device that can record from HD satellite sources this is it.

This device is good for archiving HD broadcast content to a computer.Many cable set-top boxes offer a built-in DVR nicely integrated with the rest of the cable box functionality. They're very convenient. Trying to replace that functionality with this box might be rather challenging and less convenient. I haven't tried that. Problem with set-top DVRs is the content is usually on some internal disk in a proprietary format. You can't share it or view it on a computer. You can't archive it. If you want to change cable providers or the box has a hardware failure you loose all your recordings.If your set-top cable box has Component Video and audio outputs (some boxes send output to both Component Video and HDMI outputs simultaneously) you can plug the Component Video outputs into this Hauppauge and capture the video into a (large) file on your computer. (Capturing video output from an HDMI output port on your cable box is not supported because its not legal.) The Hauppauge connects to your computer via a USB port. One can certainly set up a video capture manually (to capture live broadcasts or playback of DVR recorded shows). I haven't tried it to set up any automatic/periodic capturing - you would at least need a dedicated computer attached to the Hauppauge.Selecting the highest variable input bit rate, 13M bits/second, will give you quality that rivals the original broadcast. With variable bit rate, the 13Mb/s setting is the maximum data rate used. If the actual video is not busy it will use up less to capture. The higher the data rate, the better the final quality, but also the bigger the captured file will be. Actually, some HD broadcasts appear to be compressed to a lower bit rate than 13Mb/s given their poor quality. You can't make quality better than the original. Note also that playback quality is dependent on how powerful your playback equipment is. The file stored on your computer may contain a very high quality recording but if your computer graphics hardware is mediocre, you won't see quality output.The video capture software that comes with the product is a bit clunky but works, at least under Windows 7. The captured file format is H.264 which is supported by Windows 7 and other video players.