Upgraded my vid-capping

This past week I upgraded my vid-capping setup. I shipped my Hava (described in
http://www.2old2play.com/Blog/Comments/7572/35577) off to ChiefBunnyScrat/IAmtheLiquor and I picked up this bad-boy

A Hauppauge HD PVR. This will allow vid-capping at 720p (HD quality) rather than the Hava's 480p (DVD quality). Take a look at the difference (make sure you select 720p for the Hauppauge vid):

MW2 TDM on Rust

Hauppauge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waXt8oPVk6k


Hava:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCY2S8wPJ5E


Neither of these units are specificly for vid-capping of course. The Hava has been designed not just to record your video input (cablebox, xbox) to your HD for later viewing but to make recordings and live TV available to other computers (over your home LAN or Internet) and cell phones. It's a competitor to the Slingbox and as such if you are only using it for XBOX vid-capture, you are using 25% of what it was designed for. Since it's meant to send video over remote connections, it limits itself to DVD quality which is 480p.

The Hauppauge HD PVR turns your PC into a TiVo. As with the Hava, you can schedule it to change the channel of your cablebox and it will record it to your hard drive. But the big quality difference is that the Hauppauge records in 720p (or even 1080i) which is a lot clearer.

Right now the Hava Platinum HD goes for about $130, the Titanium (which lets you attach an external hd) is about $140. The Hauppauge HD PVR goes for $209 on Amazon, however I got it for $175 at a Microcenter near me.

The Hauppauge has standard component inputs (as well as TOSlink for digital audio) so it's easier to setup than the Hava. The Hava uses mini-component inputs so it requires RCA couplers for your component and audio cables. It also doesn't support the 5.1 audio that the Hauppauge does.

I've used the Hauppauge for about a week now and the only complaint I have is that it doesn't have the automatic split by time feature that the Hava does. This made it trivial to record matches such as HQ that go longer than the 10 minutes that youtube allows. If you told the Hava to split at 10 minutes, it would produce a XXX_1 file for the first 10 minutes, XXX_2 for the next 10 minutes, etc. The Hauppauge simply has you specify a time length for the video, it's up to you to edit it to split it up into videos that can be acceptable to youtube. Luckily I've only been playing TDM so I've been under the 10 minute limit.

Recording your gaming is a lot of fun, especially when you can show off your great moments. Take a look at the first minute of this game, it's the best 60 seconds of my gaming career. Just make sure you stop watching after the stab. It was all downhill after that...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsGMG9_Y4pw[/youtube]