First look at the Hauppauge HD-PVR

A few days ago the Hauppauge HD-PVR started shipping, and now early adopters are starting to try plugging the HDTV digital video recorders into their computers and television sets. The HD-PVR captures high definition video from analog sources. That means you can plug in a component or composite cable from your cable, satellite, or other set top box and save videos to your PC in H.264 format.

Blogger Brent Evans got his HD-PVR yesterday and posted the unboxing video you can see above. He says setup was easy and that the latest beta version of SageTV recognizes the tuner. The software that comes with the HD-PVR lets you record programs, but it does not let you watch live television.

Evans says while his computer seems to have done a decent job of recording HD video, he can't get it to play the video smoothly. The HD-PVR also locked up twice during his initial test, and he had to reboot it by turning it off and on again.

You can find some more first person accounts at the GB-PVR forums. It looks like Brent Evans isn't the only one having some problems. Several GB-PVR user says they've been having problems with recordings failing or the device locking up altogether. In other words, if you've been waiting patiently to get an HD-PVR, it looks like you might want to wait a little longer.