Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[Cauptain]

It happened with the AverTV HD PVR. The driver was updated pretty quickly to fix the "problem".

Was that the "Ninja" drivers referred to in post #59 ? Is this driver version still available ?

How well does the AverTV product compare with the Hauppauge HD models ?

YES. Avaliable here

For AverTV HD look here


Claudio

[zerowalker]

Captain Audio, what are these so called Ninja drives;O?

[Cauptain]

Captain Audio, what are these so called Ninja drives;O?

HDCP bypass drivers. This driver will working all HDCP hardware in HDMI input.

PS3, Cables TV, Blurays...All.



Claudio

[jagabo]

When the AverTV HD DVR was first released the drivers "accidentally" allowed the capture of HDCP protected HDMI sources. Hollywood quickly caught up with them and made them fix the drivers. But you can still get the early versions on the internet.

[zerowalker]

Ah nice, but it´s weird that it´s in the driver, i thought it was built in the system to force it or something.
But i don´t like the HDCP anyhow, what happened to the old good times, when you could record with your vcr and no one cared:P

[bigjimmpls]

I have a question to ask about the colossus. Once in a while I record something for my mother in law and she only has a vcr. I was wondering if I can record a show from tv and use the pass through on the colossus directly to my vcr. And if I can how would I connect it? My vcr has component hookups. Sure would cut down my time.

Thanks for the help.

[SHS]

Your vcr has component output what kind vcr is it
That Passthur is for Live Video Feed if you mean take some per-recorded video file and output is that what your asking? then it NO.
Other then that Yes you can record from that Passthur feed.

[bigjimmpls]

It is a philips DVD/VCR. So you're saying that I can feed a straight passthru from recording a live tv show to the vcr? How would I do that? Is the passthru live all the time if the cables are connected?

Thanks

[jagabo]

It is a philips DVD/VCR. So you're saying that I can feed a straight passthru from recording a live tv show to the vcr? How would I do that?

If it's like the Hauppauge HD PVR: you run a cable from the live source to the Colossus's input port, then run a cable from the Colossus's output port to the VCR.

Is the passthru live all the time if the cables are connected?

Again, if it's like the Hauppauge HD PVR: the passthrough works only when the Colossus is powered on.

[SHS]

It is a philips DVD/VCR. So you're saying that I can feed a straight passthru from recording a live tv show to the vcr? How would I do that? Is the passthru live all the time if the cables are connected?

Thanks

If I recall rigth thoses Combo device don't allow you to used output component on the VCR side that is for DVD Player side only

[bigjimmpls]

Well I guess then I can use the composite. It going to a vcr so the quality wouldn't be that great anyway. I want to thank you SHS and jagabo for all the help. I appreciate it.

[HeLLx]

Hello I wonder if with the Hauppauge Colossus I can do the recording in .MP4 not. TS?

[jman98]

Hello I wonder if with the Hauppauge Colossus I can do the recording in .MP4 not. TS?

Yes. The Colossus supports capturing to TS, M2TS and MP4 containers.

[HeLLx]

Hello I wonder if with the Hauppauge Colossus I can do the recording in .MP4 not. TS?

Yes. The Colossus supports capturing to TS, M2TS and MP4 containers.

Thank jman98 you would have any tutorial that teaches how to make the recording already. Mp4?

[HeLLx]

Hello I would also like to know if there is any software to unlock the channels on my decoder, I live in Brazil and when I turn on the HDMI device in the company's "NET" nothing appears on the computer as if it was locked. You know something?

[jman98]

Hello I would also like to know if there is any software to unlock the channels on my decoder, I live in Brazil and when I turn on the HDMI device in the company's "NET" nothing appears on the computer as if it was locked. You know something?

HDMI video cannot be encrypted for the Colossus to record it. Maybe your HDMI video is encrypted, but I really do not understand your post very well. I have no idea what you mean when you say "the company's "NET"".

No, I do not have a tutorial for you, but it's not difficult to figure this out without a tutorial. ShowBiz has a setting at the bottom to pick which container you want - TS, MP4 or M2TS. I think MP4 is the default.

[HeLLx]

Hello I would also like to know if there is any software to unlock the channels on my decoder, I live in Brazil and when I turn on the HDMI device in the company's "NET" nothing appears on the computer as if it was locked. You know something?

HDMI video cannot be encrypted for the Colossus to record it. Maybe your HDMI video is encrypted, but I really do not understand your post very well. I have no idea what you mean when you say "the company's "NET"".

No, I do not have a tutorial for you, but it's not difficult to figure this out without a tutorial. ShowBiz has a setting at the bottom to pick which container you want - TS, MP4 or M2TS. I think MP4 is the default.

Yes it is encrypted, I would like to know is there any way to do this "breaking the encryption"
And sorry for "the company's" NET "this company is to pay television subscription closed for access to closed channels as here in Brazil where I live is all a question of finance I am required to pay a high value to have a quality television .

On the recording, I could write these three qualities that you presented. TS. And MP4. M2T2

[jagabo]

HDCP stripper: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/348056-A-possible-new-HDCP-stripper
HDCP+HDMI to component: search for HDFury

[BOMOON]

I have a DirecTV HD PVR. Most of the time all of my A/V equipment is connected to the PVR via component cables.

If I were to use this card, I'd also run component cables from my DirecTV receiver to the HDMI adapters provided with the card. The question then is: how would the card handle HDCP-protected video in that case? Would the video be blocked from the card even though I'm using component cabling and the component connectors on the receiver?

Also, would the HDCP-protected video be blocked from my other component-connected devices when I connect the card to the receiver?

The way it's set up now, if I replace the component cabling with HDMI for a device while I'm watching an HDCP-protected video, the video is blocked to all other devices still connected by component. I understand how that part works.

What I don't understand is how the DirecTV receiver will handle the component connection through HDMI adapters to the card. Will the receiver treat it as an HDMI connection, even though I'm not using an HDMI connector on the receiver itself?

Sorry if the questions are incoherent. I don't have a very good handle on HDCP, HDMI, component, and how they mix and match. All I really have for a guide is the behavior of my system when I swap out cabling as described above.

Thanks for your patience,
Alan Mintaka

[lacywest]

I dont have any problems using the Hauppauge HD PVR 1212 with component video cables ... if you can avoid using HDMI connections go for it. As for using it with HDMI adapters ... well unless they cost alot of money and you having bought them yet ... give it a try.

Good luck ... let us know what you tried and if all went well

[jagabo]

If I were to use this card, I'd also run component cables from my DirecTV receiver to the HDMI adapters provided with the card. The question then is: how would the card handle HDCP-protected video in that case?

The pigtail cable doesn't convert component video to HDMI. It just routes the component signals to a connector that looks like an HDMI connector but is a component input.

[HeLLx]

@jagabo My problem with the security broke was resolved, using an F90 - AZ America that he can have access to all channels without the protection system.

Now I have other questions too: Do you know any way to capture with the legend (subtitle) but she getting outside? Not embedded in the video as it happens right?

And another question do you know any other program other than the ArcSoft to make the Rec?

Thank you for your attention

[BOMOON]

If I were to use this card, I'd also run component cables from my DirecTV receiver to the HDMI adapters provided with the card. The question then is: how would the card handle HDCP-protected video in that case?

The pigtail cable doesn't convert component video to HDMI. It just routes the component signals to a connector that looks like an HDMI connector but is a component input.

I see how that works now. In the images with the adapters plugged in, it's hard to tell that they aren't really HDMI connectors. Amazon's product images show the connectors without anything plugged in, and you can tell the difference between them better. In fact, the A/V connectors almost look like SATA inputs, though it's hard to see the exact detail. Whatever their footprint is, it's clear in the image that the HDMI and A/V ports are separate, and that the A/V port accepts both component video and audio through the same adapter.

Here's a link to Amazon's product page. It's worth a visit for the images down in the detailed description.

http://www.amazon.com/Hauppauge-Colossus-Express-Internal-HD-PVR/dp/B004OVE2B4

It should be noted that while the earlier reviews were mostly positive, many of the 2012 reviews have been negative on all fronts - technical and support. Something seems to have gone wrong with the latest batch, and Hauppauge is dropping the ball on support.

Amazon's price these days is around $140.00. I think I'm going to give it a shot, despite the bad reviews. As always with Amazon reviews of their best sellers, the bellyachers could be in the minority of the total number of purchases. I already have the cabling strung in the basement so I'm itching to do something with component video.

Thanks for the info,
Alan Mintaka

[Seeker47]

It should be noted that while the earlier reviews were mostly positive, many of the 2012 reviews have been negative on all fronts - technical and support. Something seems to have gone wrong with the latest batch, and Hauppauge is dropping the ball on support.

Amazon's price these days is around $140.00. I think I'm going to give it a shot, despite the bad reviews. As always with Amazon reviews of their best sellers, the bellyachers could be in the minority of the total number of purchases. I already have the cabling strung in the basement so I'm itching to do something with component video.

Please report back on your results with this. I may have waited too long to make this purchase, and if the product runs are no longer any good . . . .

(But this was supposed to be one of the best options in this category. Not sure what to choose, if these are no longer recommended.)

[BOMOON]

It should be noted that while the earlier reviews were mostly positive, many of the 2012 reviews have been negative on all fronts - technical and support. Something seems to have gone wrong with the latest batch, and Hauppauge is dropping the ball on support.
Amazon's price these days is around $140.00. I think I'm going to give it a shot, despite the bad reviews. As always with Amazon reviews of their best sellers, the bellyachers could be in the minority of the total number of purchases. I already have the cabling strung in the basement so I'm itching to do something with component video.

Please report back on your results with this. I may have waited too long to make this purchase, and if the product runs are no longer any good . . . .
(But this was supposed to be one of the best options in this category. Not sure what to choose, if these are no longer recommended.)

Amazon's refund policy is a little ambiguous when it comes to opened packages, especially in the electronics category. I asked them about this in the context of the Hauppauge card, which must be installed in order to determine if it works or not. They agreed to apply a full refund if I have any problems with it. I think part of this agreement has to do with the large number of purchases I make from Amazon - they've always been good to me because of that. Who knows, it may be an OEM package anyway, which is why no restocking fee would be charged for a return.

Newegg, on the other hand, would charge a 15% restocking fee. Ergo, I'll buy Amazon's product. Even at the low price it will take a few weeks for me to pony up the bucks, so I may not be able to post a report until the end of the month.

Per what you said about recent batches of the product, note that Hauppauge just posted a driver update in July 2012. Product support isn't totally lacking, in other words. Whether or not the update fixes all the problems that are being reported is another question. For any future reference, here's a link to Hauppauge's product support and driver update page, as well as a link to the support forums.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_colossus.html

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/forum/

Have a good one,
Alan Mintaka

[jman98]

Geez, the propensity to look for trouble where none exists amazes me.

I bought a Colossus a few months ago. The card works fine. Now if you are some dumb game playing moron with an IQ of about 80 but you "gots to record my game play for my budz 2 watch on youtoob" then maybe you will have some issues. Maybe. I don't play games. I don't record game play. But the card works FINE. For example, the guy from Quebec who posted the negative review on June 13 of this year at Amazon is likely a moron. I've NEVER had any of the issues he reports. My workflow - composite -> composite to component converter -> Colossus. Record with ArcSoft. Edit with VideoReDo TVSuite. Now granted, I am NOT attempting to use composite -> composite in on the card. There MAY be issues with that. But I get the impression from the review that he just does not know what he is doing and he's blaming the technology. I only record to TS so if you try something else, who knows if you will have issues. I accidentally used M2TS once and it worked fine. You have to use ArcSoft to record anything "on the fly" but that's OK because it's fine. However, you can setup timer recordings via WinTV and I've never had an issue with those either. The chip the card uses is fine but it is capable of more (ie. MPEG-2 video) than Hauppauge drivers allow you to use. Do understand that you're only going to get H.264 video and AAC audio (under rare circumstances such as cable box recordings you may get AC3 audio though) and you have to be able to work with that. I have never tried HDMI capturing. I honesty think the problems are well overblown. The card has a TBC feature that has been a godsend for some of my video tapes. I love the card.

[BOMOON]

...
I don't record game play. But the card works FINE.
...
My workflow - composite -> composite to component converter -> Colossus. Record with ArcSoft. Edit with VideoReDo TVSuite. Now granted, I am NOT attempting to use composite -> composite in on the card. There MAY be issues with that. But I get the impression from the review that he just does not know what he is doing and he's blaming the technology. I only record to TS so if you try something else, who knows if you will have issues. I accidentally used M2TS once and it worked fine. You have to use ArcSoft to record anything "on the fly" but that's OK because it's fine. However, you can setup timer recordings via WinTV and I've never had an issue with those either. The chip the card uses is fine but it is capable of more (ie. MPEG-2 video) than Hauppauge drivers allow you to use. Do understand that you're only going to get H.264 video and AAC audio (under rare circumstances such as cable box recordings you may get AC3 audio though) and you have to be able to work with that. I have never tried HDMI capturing. I honesty think the problems are well overblown. The card has a TBC feature that has been a godsend for some of my video tapes. I love the card.

It sounds as though your workflow is very similar to mine. I have used VideoReDo in the past, as an adjunct to some of the things I've been doing with Sony Vegas Pro 11 and DVD Architect 5.2. I found this GREAT canned extensions package called Vegasaur that runs scripts and provides other FX addons for just about anything I want to do that isn't already built into Vegas. For audio transcoding (when I have to) I use the VST 5.1 surround plugins to fake surround when I can. Those are a tad opaque to use but I've at least narrowed it down a subset of settings that work as well as my ears do, at any rate. For standalone wave editing when I have to resort to it, I use the old standby, Audacity.

For capturing I have used Sony VidCap 6.0, the standalone that comes bundled with the Vegas suite, but that may have to change for hi-def component recording. I just don't know about that part yet. However you've been having good luck with ArcSoft, and that's the one that's being talked about in the Hauppauge forums, so I'll probably give that one a try if I can't use VidCap.

Like you, I'm not a gamer. I'm in this for the old movies and TV shows on DirecTV, and some of the newer Anime that's being shown on The Anime Channel VOD. I also have a HUGE library of old stuff on VHS which I would like to transcribe. I have the hardware and have done it on occasion, but the SD transcriptions I've been getting with the Canopus are hard to make watchable for a number of reasons I won't go into in detail here. Maybe the TBC supported by the Colossus will clear up some of the problems.

Besides, since I last tried SD transcription of VHS to DVD, I've learned a lot about how to use Vegas to clean things up. I'm hoping that with the Colossus I can combine all that experience with component recordings to preserve those old tapes in a watchable state.

Mine is a pretty disorganized tool set to be sure, but it gets the job done for a wide variety of video and audio formats. H.264 video and AAC or AC3 audio won't be a problem as far as getting the raw recordings into the editors and authoring programs.

I'm sure there will be a steep learning curve, especially with me in it. That's just an unavoidable circumstance.

I've placed the order with Amazon and will get the card sometime between 08/16 and 08/21. My fingers are crossed!

Have a good one,
Alan Mintaka

[BOMOON]

The card has a TBC feature that has been a godsend for some of my video tapes. I love the card.

I forgot to ask: does your VCR have component video outputs? If not, how are you connecting your VCR to the Colossus? I just checked my VCRs and the most I could do at the moment is

S-Video out -> S-Video/Component adapter -> Component/AV-Input Adapter -> Colossus.

Is that pretty much the best way to do a passive connection from a VCR to the card?

Thanks for your time and help,
Alan Mintaka

[Seeker47]

You have to use ArcSoft to record anything "on the fly" but that's OK because it's fine. However, you can setup timer recordings via WinTV and I've never had an issue with those either. The chip the card uses is fine but it is capable of more (ie. MPEG-2 video) than Hauppauge drivers allow you to use. Do understand that you're only going to get H.264 video and AAC audio (under rare circumstances such as cable box recordings you may get AC3 audio though) and you have to be able to work with that. I have never tried HDMI capturing. I honesty think the problems are well overblown. The card has a TBC feature that has been a godsend for some of my video tapes. I love the card.

No alternative to the Hauppauge drivers I suppose -- no matter what else the hardware might be able to do -- but there's no option for using third-party capture software ?

Like Orsetto, I'd much rather do most of these jobs with a Pioneer standalone DVDR any day, but I also think an HTPC is going to become an unavoidable step in the not so distant future, for those who like to archive material. If the Hauppauge Colossus remains the top choice for this, we will just have to adjust to the way that it works best.

[BOMOON]

Well, I regret to report that so far, the Hauppauge Colossus is a bust. The essential problem is that I can't do anything with the captured output files. Sony Vegas Pro 11 won't touch them, third-party demuxers such as TSMuxer produce output that's just as unusuable, and I have yet to find any third party editing or transcoding software that can read those files.

I've spent some time on the Hauppauge forums asking questions and looking for answers in other threads. The problem there is that there is no consistent solution described in any of the posts. Users have been experimenting with different settings in Vegas, TSMuxer, other editors/transcoders, and the consensus seems to be: sometimes you can read the captured output files with another program, but most of the time you can't. Nothing you do with the files one way or the other makes any difference.

I'm too burned out at the moment to compile a long, boring report with captured video file formats, changes attempted with programs like TSMuxer, etc. Suffice it to say that unless I find a solution very soon, the Colossus is going back to Amazon for a full refund per my agreement with them.

I can't leave here without tossing out a futile question: has anyone been able to use the video files captured by the Hauppauge Colossus in any kind of editor, authoring program, transcoder, demuxer? If so, what did you use and how did you configure the card and software?

Most importantly of all: have you gotten consistent results with whatever solution you've found?

My toolset at the moment includes (programs that can do anything with HD, that is

Arcsoft Showbiz 3.5.17.77 (bundled with card; crapware)
WinTV 7 2.5cd (bundled with card; crapware)

AVS Video Convertor 8 (with the complete AVS Video and Audio Toolset)

Capture4Me - thought this would produce more manageable captured files than WinTV or ArcSoft, but it calls the same GUI for the low-level drivers provided by Hauppauge.

Nero 11 Platinum (someone on these forums or over on Happauge forum said he could capture and edit video from the Colossus with this software. I think he was blowing smoke, because Nero 11 can't see the card and the Nero website doesn't include either the Hauppauge Colossus or Hauppauge HD-PVR in its supported devices list)

Windows Media Center - good grief. Has to be set up as a PVR with a tuner in order to capture video from the Colossus. That's the theory, anyway. Media Center thinks my DirecTV HR22-100 HD PVR is a digital cable tuner and never finds channels on it.

Sony Vegas Pro 11/DVD Architect 5.2

TSMuxer 1.10.6
TSDEMuxGUI (can't find a version number, it's whatever is downloaded from this website VideoHelp.com)

Pile of Codecs - whatever gets installed with all those programs, plus the Windows 7 Codec Pack. This is pretty black-box to me at the moment.

There are probably other programs floating around on my system. I'm out of gas and can't continue the list. Anyone have ideas?

Thanks for your time,
Alan Mintaka