Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[SWKerr]

Glad I read this post today. Found mine sitting on the front porch at 11:30pm looking all lonely. I'll have to give it a go this weekend.

[Fuzzy]

So, for you guys who have gotten it running with sage, does it support MPEG-2? What sort of configuration options for quality does it have?

[Slugger]

Settings pretty much look exactly like HDPVR. I don't see a way to set it up for MPEG2 encoding. It definitely uses H.264 by default.

[cat6man]

thanks slugger! (particularly for the driver link)............hope to get this done late morning

[Tiki]

Mine came last night. I noticed that on the Quick Install Guide it lists the package contents as including an HDMI cable, but there was no HDMI cable in the box. Anyone else notice this?

[matt91]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Settings pretty much look exactly like HDPVR. I don't see a way to set it up for MPEG2 encoding. It definitely uses H.264 by default.

Grrrr...that's what I was waiting for too.

Although I haven't stress-tested it, I can't imagine my server handling comskip on H264 very well.

Hopefully the mpeg2 support is included on a future beta after all the rest of the bugs the beta fixed are confirmed to be squashed.

[jptheripper]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Mine came last night. I noticed that on the Quick Install Guide it lists the package contents as including an HDMI cable, but there was no HDMI cable in the box. Anyone else notice this?

No HDMI cable for me either, although doesnt really matter.

[jptheripper]

I dont mean to sound snarky, but why do we care about mpeg2 recording? its analog so its being compressed anyway, h264 vs mpeg2 quality difference is nearly imperceivable and h264 file sizes are so much smaller when i did my comparison h264 was all pros and mpeg2 was all cons.

Is there some functionality that is missing with h264?

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

I dont mean to sound snarky, but why do we care about mpeg2 recording? its analog so its being compressed anyway, h264 vs mpeg2 quality difference is nearly imperceivable and h264 file sizes are so much smaller when i did my comparison h264 was all pros and mpeg2 was all cons.

Is there some functionality that is missing with h264?

MPEG2 is easier to process. Especially for detecting commercials.

[Clift]

I exchanged PMs with Jeff (Narflex) and he indicated if Hauppauge supplies the hooks in the drivers or via registry edit then SageTV would support MPEG-2. Looks like the ball is, or will be, in Hauppauge's court to implement MPEG-2 or make it available to third parties.

[jptheripper]

ok cool. Can h264 (colossus, hdpvr) recordings still be comskipped?

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

ok cool. Can h264 (colossus, hdpvr) recordings still be comskipped?

Yes, with the latest Show Analyzer or the donator version of comskip.

[bsung]

Stability and speed are reasons I might upgrade from HDPVR. I haven't seen anything posted about channel changing speed. Can anyone who installed Colossus comment about whether it tunes faster than the HDPVR? Stability, I guess we won't know until a lot of people have used it for a while.

Thanks

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by bsung

Stability and speed are reasons I might upgrade from HDPVR. I haven't seen anything posted about channel changing speed. Can anyone who installed Colossus comment about whether it tunes faster than the HDPVR? Stability, I guess we won't know until a lot of people have used it for a while.

Thanks

+1

any first impressions on speed...............there is an internal sage config setting for hdpvr channel tuning time delay................there is probably one for the colossus so first impressions could be limited by that setting

[Chriscic]

Looking forward to the first quality comparisons between the original HD-PVR and Collossus.

Good to hear no lock-ups reported yet!

[monetteboy]

Here are my very initial impressions. *Note I am a risk taker so instead of easing into the colossus I jumped with both feet and removed my HD-PVR's (5x total) and replaced them with 4 Colossus cards. My server is an i7 950, 6gb and the motherboard is a high end MSI with 7 pcie slots.

Install went fine...I used the new drivers that were provided in this thread. Updated Sage, fired everything up and installed all of the new sources. When installing each source the picture came through and seemed to be working fine.

At this point I thought was in the clear...until we started to watch tv. Channel changing sometimes took upwards of 30 seconds. Once it started everything looked fine....then when I started to record a second show sage started freezing with the circle of death and eventually would crash. My heap however was really low and the service was still running. Sometimes I could reboot the hd-300 and it would work again for a few moments but then the freezing would start. The only way I could fix it was with a reboot. So at this point I have had no success in using more than one colossus card.

I am curious if anyone else has had any luck with more than one card? I have had very little time to even start troubleshooting so it is probably something with my config. My 2 year old however wasn't so thrilled when he couldn't watch his cartoons this morning

BTW...for what little I did get to watch the quality seemed better than the HD-PVR's.

[bmh]

I installed mine yesterday but now I have issues with the HVR-2250 card not showing the digitial tuners in Sagetv. I used the CD that came with the Colosussus and while it was installing, it also upgraded the drivers for the 2250. After rebooting and firing up SageTV, I noticed the sound from the analog tuners on the 2250 had a bad echo. I reverted the drivers to an earlier version and that fixed the sound but I still have no digital tuners. Other than this issue, the install went smooth and the Colosussus works great.

[jptheripper]

Others have reported this as well. See beta forum.

Originally Posted by bmh

I installed mine yesterday but now I have issues with the HVR-2250 card not showing the digitial tuners in Sagetv. I used the CD that came with the Colosussus and while it was installing, it also upgraded the drivers for the 2250. After rebooting and firing up SageTV, I noticed the sound from the analog tuners on the 2250 had a bad echo. I reverted the drivers to an earlier version and that fixed the sound but I still have no digital tuners. Other than this issue, the install went smooth and the Colosussus works great.

[cat6man]

did all the folks reporting problems use the installation disk, as opposed to slugger's method of just using the new driver download?

[jptheripper]

I too was wondering that, wondering if the driver disk screwed up the 2250 drivers.