After hearing all the good reviews on the picture quality of Hauppauge's HD PVR, I finally bought one. And was extremely dissappointed. It's re-encoding of the content is more than obvious, and the resulting quality is horrible compared to what it started out as.

Of course, now that I've shelled out the money, I'm finding threads that discuss this - obviously, I didn't wait long enough. :)


Anyway, I'm going to be returning my HD PVR, because I can't stand the resulting video quality, and I wanted to know what other options there were. I've got DTV. I guess what I'd like is a solution that either lets me grab the raw data stream (after it's legally decrypted, of course), or let's me capture the component output without re-encoding it - and to do all this in a way that lets me use it with some sort of PVR software.

Please tell me I've got a better choice.

It’s technically possible, but the required data rate for 1920 x 1080i raw is around 185MB/s, and that does not include audio. Do you really want to use 1.3TB of storage space for 2 hours of video?

or let's me capture the component output without re-encoding it

Component video is analog. If you're going to store it in digital format, it has to be (re-)encoded to digital.

Are there any options that let me grab the original data stream, then? Or can that only be done with cable?

Are there any options that let me grab the original data stream, then?
Nextcom R5000-HD (http://www.nextcomwireless.com/R5000/home.htm)

Are there any options that let me grab the original data stream, then? Or can that only be done with cable?

The AJA Xena LH

http://www.aja.com/html/products_windows_xena_LHe.html