Hauppauge Computer Works
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Hauppauge Computer Works, or just Hauppauge (pronounced /hɔphɔg/) for short, is a United States manufacturer and marketer of electronic video hardware for personal computers. Although it is most widely known for its WinTV line of TV tuner cards for PCs, Hauppauge also produces personal video recorders, digital video editors, digital media players, hybrid video recorders and digital television products for both PC and Apple Macintosh. The company is named after the hamlet of Hauppauge, New York, in which it is based.
In addition to its headquarters in New York, Hauppauge also has sales and technical support offices in the UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Poland, Singapore and Spain.
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[edit] Company history
Hauppauge was co-founded by Kenneth Plotkin and Kenneth Aupperle, and became incorporated in 1994.
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[edit] Product lines
The Hauppauge PVR video capture/tuner cards have been especially popular because they have built-in MPEG-2 video compression hardware. In the early 2000s, when the company's first PVR products were introduced, video capture devices for PCs tended to rely on external, software-based video compression, which burdens the computer's central processing unit. When performed in real time on computers with inadequate processing power, software-based compression results in dropped frames and audio–video synchronization errors. Hardware-based compression avoids this risk because the video data is MPEG-2 encoded in real-time by the card.
[edit] Digital Terrestrial and Hybrid Range
In 2002, Hauppauge began to sell digital terrestrial tuner (DTT) cards supporting the DVB-T standard. The original designs were rebranded TechnoTrend cards such as the TT-Budget DVB-T PCI and TT-Micro+. As of 2004 Hauppauge began to develop their own more modern designs based on chipsets from a handful of manufacturers including Conexant, DiBcom and eMPIA Technologies.
All of the current digital terrestrial (NOVA) and hybrid (HVR) models support Microsoft's Broadcast Driver Architecture (BDA), and thus are supported by Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and a notable amount of 3rd party software. Hauppauge also bundles its own WinTV2000 software with the cards that are boxed for retail sale.
The newest digital terrestrial range is named after places in England: Chelsea, Oxford, Dover, Soho, and Bristol. The PVR range is named after places in New York: Sag Harbor, Roslyn Harbor, Amity Harbor, Dering Harbor, and Baldwin Harbor; and the analogue cards are named after planets: Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto. The latest digital satellite card design is called Bremen.
WinTV NOVA-T PCI (Chelsea)
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Conexant CX23882
- DVB Demod: Conexant CX22702
This was the first of the new cards to be released, and originally caused confusion because it used the same "Model 909" identification as the older TechnoTrend card. At the time, Microsoft's BDA was in its infancy, so there was only a handful of third-party software available that could take advantage of the card. More software is now available, and the NOVA-T PCI has become one of the most popular DTT cards among both OEMs and end users.
In order to avoid confusion with the older TechnoTrend card, users make reference to it by its board design code, 90002. An updated Nova-T PCI, the 90003, lacks the RF pass-through connector.
The 90xxx family of cards, including the NOVA-T MCE, is collectively known as "Chelsea". Chelsea cards use the Conexant CX23882-19 broadcast decoder and Conexant CX22702 DVB-t demodulator, similar to the Conexant Stratford2 reference design.
WinTV HVR-1100 (Oxford)
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Conexant CX23881/23882
- DVB Demod: Conexant CX22702
- MPEG Encoder: MainConcept Software Encoder
The HVR-1100 is similar to the NOVA-T PCI, but also supports analogue tuning. It is based on the Conexant CX23881 chipset, and closely follows the Conexant Oxford reference design. As with Chelsea, Oxford boards come under various guises, with different functionality. There's the retail card with infrared remote control, and MCE cards with FM-Radio and phono audio inputs. A number of OEM Windows Media Center systems come with a low-profile variant of this card.
WinTV HVR-1300 (Dover)
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Conexant CX23882
- DVB Demod: Conexant CX22702
- MPEG Encoder: Conexant CX23416
The HVR-1300 is similar to the HVR-1100, but has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder on-board, similar to the PVR-150 and PVR-160.
WinTV NOVA-T USB2 (Soho)
- 3rd party Linux driver available, see LinuxTV.org
- DVB Demod: DiBcom DIB-3000P
- MPEG Encoder: Not required
The replacement for the original NOVA-T USB was this small metallic box, bus powered, and only supported with USB 2.0 (not backwards compatible with USB 1.x for bandwidth reasons). Unlike the PCI DTT cards, this one uses a DiBcom chipset; the DIB3000-P combined with a Panasonic ENV57H tuner.
WinTV NOVA-T-Stick
- Linux driver not available, see LinuxTV.org
- DVB Demod: DiBcom DIB7700-P
- MPEG Encoder: Not required
Originally announced at CeBIT 2006, the 'Stick' is not to be confused with the older NOVA-T USB2. Naturally supporting USB2, it comes in a smaller integrated package along with their high performance mobile UHF/VHF antenna. [1]
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WinTV HVR-900
- Video Decoder: Texas Instruments TVP5150A
- USB Interface: eMPIA Tech EM2880
- MPEG Encoder: MainConcept Software Encoder
The latest addition to the hybrid range, the HVR-900, supports digital terrestrial and analogue, all in a tiny USB 2.0 "stick", not much bigger than a typical USB flash drive (but it still has a full sized coax connector onboard). Hauppauge supply the HVR-900 with a small desktop aerial.
WinTV NOVA-T-500 (Bristol)
- DVB Demod: Dual DiBCom DIB3000-P
- PCI Interface: VIA VT6212 PCI-USB Bridge
- MPEG Encoder: Not required
Hauppauges first dual-DVB-T card. It is based on the same DiBcom chipset, which is used in the NOVA-T-USB2. [2]
[edit] Forthcoming
WinTV HVR-3000
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Conexant CX23882
- DVB Demod: Conexant CX22702
This is not on the market yet. It is a tri-mode hybrid PCI card capable of receiving analogue terrestrial/cable, digital terrestrial and digital satellite (DVB-S).
WinTV HVR-4000
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Conexant CX23882-39
- DVB Demod: Conexant CX24116-12Z
This is not on the market yet. It is the world's first quad-mode hybrid PCI card supporting DVB-T, DVB-S, DVB-S2, and analog TV and FM radio. This broad format support will allow it to be marketed in Western Europe and the U.S. There is speculation that this will be the platform used to fulfill Microsoft and DirecTV's promise at CES 2006 for full MCE support.
[edit] Digital Satellite
In 2005, Hauppauge began to replace its aging TechnoTrend based DVB-s range with the company's own Conexant-based designs that are similar to the new Nova-T PCI. The first two new boards work under MCE2005, which doesn't natively support DVB-S, by appearing to MCE as a DVB-T device. They both use Hauppauge's own WinTV2000 software.
WinTV NOVA-SE2 The NOVA-SE2 is the basic digital satellite card.
WinTV NOVA-S-PLUS Essentially the same as the NOVA-SE2, but also has analogue inputs for video (composite and S-Video) and audio. Compression of these inputs is achieved via SoftPVR, a software-based MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 encoding application.
[edit] PVR Range
PVR cards are analogue TV tuners which will output an MPEG-2 compressed stream from an on-board encoder. This makes them ideal for archiving recordings to DVD (as MPEG-2 is the format used on DVD-Video). The hardware encoder also makes the cards practical for use on systems with CPU speeds under 1 GHz. Another advantage is that everything is done "on the card" rather than using a separate sound card to capture the audio.
WinTV PVR-150 (Amity2)
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Conexant CX2584x
- MPEG Encoder: Conexant CX23416
The PVR-150 is the current midrange PVR card. On paper, the PVR-150 is technically superior to the PVR-250, and it has gained an army of supporters in the HTPC community. There have been some minor driver problems during its first year of life but these have been mostly resolved in the later drivers.
There is a low profile variant produced for Media Center called the Baldwin2.
WinTV PVR-160 (Roslyn)
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Conexant CX2388x
- MPEG Encoder: Conexant CX23416
The PVR-160 is a repackaging of the WinTV Roslyn. The Roslyn is based on the Conexant Blackbird design and uses the CX2388x video decoder. This board was originally only available to OEMs and third party software vendors such as Frey Technologies (SageTV) and Snapstream (BeyondTV). The board was sold under many names including the PVR-250BTV (Snapstream). This card is known to have color and brightness issues that can be corrected somewhat using registry hacks. Hauppauge received a large surplus amount of these cards from OEM and third party vendors. The cards were repackaged with an MCE remote and receiver and rebranded the PVR-160. This card must be used with a third party PVR application such as MCE, SageTV or BeyondTV. The standard WinTV software will not work with this card, you will receive no audio when used with the WinTV software.
WinTV PVR-250 (Amity Harbor)
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Philips SAA7115
- MPEG Encoder: Conexant CX23416 (ivac15/ivac16)
Although technically inferior to the PVR-150, the PVR-250 is widely regarded as the highest quality card in the WinTV PVR line. The PVR-250 comes in three variants: the retail PVR-250 (Amity Harbor), a low-profile board for Media Center system integrators called the PVR-250MCE-LP (Baldwin Harbor), and a full height board for Media Center called the PVR-250MCE.
Although it's commonly referred to as a PVR-250, the Hauppauge Rosyln is a completely different design, using the Conexant CX2388x video decoder rather than the Philips chip on the "regular" 250.
The original version of the PVR-250 was a variant of the Sag Harbor (PVR-350) which used the ivac15 chipset. Although the chipset was able to hardware decoding the video out components were not included on the card. In later versions of the PVR-250 the ivac15 was replaced with the ivac16 to reduce cost and to relieve heat issues.
WinTV PVR-350 (Sag Harbor)
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Philips SAA7115
- MPEG Encoder: ivac15
The PVR-350 was the bigger brother of the PVR-250 and has hardware-decoded TV-Out and FM Radio. The hardware decoding comes at a price, though: heat.
WinTV PVR-500MCE (Amity2DT)
- Video Decoder: Dual Conexant CX25840/25843
- PCI Interface: PLX FastLane 6140 PCI-to-PCI Bridge
- MPEG Encoder: Dual Conexant CX23416
The PVR-500 is the 150's big brother and is essentially two PVR-150s on a single card. That means two of everything that's on the 150, linked together by a PCI bridge. It is officially designed for Windows Media Center, but other 3rd party applications support it.
WinTV PVR-USB2 (Dering Harbor)
- Video Decoder: Philips SAA7115
- MPEG Encoder: Conexant CX23416 (ivac16)
The PVR-USB2 is very similar in performance and quality to the PVR-250 card but has the addition of FM Radio. While it can achieve higher bitrates with a USB 2.0 connection, it will also work on USB 1.1 controllers without any noticeable loss in quality. A similar product is available for Apple Mac computers, called the myTV.PVR.
WinTV PVR2-USB2+
- Video Decoder: Conexant CX2584x
- MPEG Encoder: Conexant CX23416
This appears to be a new version of the PVR-USB2. [3]
[edit] WinTV PCI/USB (analogue)
WinTV-Express
- Chipset: Conexant Fusion 878A
Entry level card with no onboard hardware compression.
WinTV-GO
- Chipset: Conexant Fusion 878A
As the WinTV-Express but TV audio has NICAM stereo support. New cards with CX23880/1/2 chipset.
WinTV-Primio-FM
- Chipset: Conexant CX23880/1/2
The Primio is based on the newer Conexant 88x chipset and uses the SoftPVR software MPEG encoder for recording.
WinTV-PCI-FM
- Chipset: Conexant CX23880/1/2
As the Primio-FM, but supporting S-Video input rather than Composite. Composite capture is still supported, but over the S-Video connector.
WinTV USB
- Chipset: Unknown
Interface: USB 1.x There is also a version with FM Radio called the WinTV USB-FM.
WinTV USB2
- Chipset: eMPIA (Unknown)
- Interface: USB 2.0
The WinTV USB2 is an update of the WinTV USB, and comes with the SoftPVR software MPEG encoder, infra-red remote control and inputs for S-Video.
[edit] MediaMVP
The MediaMVP is a thin client device that displays music, video and pictures (hence "MVP") on a television. It is based around an IBM PowerPC RISC processor specialised for multimedia decoding. The operating system is a form of Linux, and everything (including the menus) is served to the device via ethernet from the server PC.
Hauppauge have recently announced a Wireless MediaMVP which connects to the PC via 801.11g wireless LAN.
Various open source software solutions allow the device to be used as a frontend. An example is MVPMC [4], which allows the MediaMVP to be used as a frontend for MythTV or ReplayTV.
[edit] WinTV2000 and related software
Hauppauge's principal software offering is a TV tuning and recording application called WinTV2000. The functionality and interface has changed very little since it was introduced in the late 1990s. It is also distributed with a non-skinned interface under the name WinTV32.
WinTV2000/WinTV32 has other companion applications, including WinTV Scheduler, which performs timed recordings, and WinTV Radio, which receives FM Radio.
[edit] wing
"wing", a recent supplemental software application from Hauppauge, allows the company's PVR products to convert MPEG recordings into formats suitable for playback on the Apple Video iPod and Sony PSP. The software also includes several DivX profiles that can be used for conversion as well.
[edit] Linux
Hauppauge doesn't appear to offer Linux drivers on its web site, but there are drivers available for most of the company's cards (in IVTV and LinuxTV). It appears that some of these drivers (Nova and HVR) are written by a Hauppauge engineer.
The PVR-150 captures video on Linux, but there are reportedly difficulties getting the remote control and IR blaster to work.
SageTV Media Center for Linux supports PVR-150,PVR-250,PVR-350,PVR-500 and MediaMVP.
For ATSC and DVB applications, A list of Linux supported Hauppauge and other makes of TV cards can be found on the LinuxTVWiki page (see "Supported Hardware" section).
[edit] Older Products
Nova-t/-s/-c PCI
- PCI Interface: Philips SAA7134
- DVB Demod: Various. Earlier DVB-t model used LSI demod
Launched in 2001/2002, the original Nova-t/-s/-c PCI card was a badge-engineered TechnoTrend Budget DVB PCI. The -t/-s/-c part of the name refers to whether the card is designed for receiving digital terrestrial, digital satellite or digital cable respectively. The digital cable cards aren't much use in most parts of the world because the cable operators use a closed system.
Nova-t/-s/-c USB
Similar to the above, the Nova USB is a TechnoTrend product.
DEC2000-t/3000-s
- Chipset: Texas Instruments TMX320AV7111 DSP (ARM7 RISC)
Launched around 2002 the DEC2000-t/3000-s is another TechnoTrend design; this time, the TT-Micro+. There are two main PCB revisions in use by Hauppauge; Rev264 and Rev266. The DEC2000-t is a digital terrestrial receiver and the DEC3000-s is a digital satellite receiver. There is a European model based on the DEC2000-t called DEC2540-t which has a Common Interface slot. The DEC was quite an interesting product in that as well as being a USB receiver for use on PCs, it could also function as a standalone set top box for connection to a TV.
Nexus-s
- Chipset: Texas Instruments TMX320AV7111 DSP (ARM7 RISC)
Yet another TechnoTrend product. This is a PCI digital satellite receiver which has a standard-definition hardware decoder and TV-Out. TechnoTrend would also occasionally sell the Nexus-t through Hauppauge which was the same but for digital terrestrial. For most people it was far too expensive and the extra expense over the Nova couldn't be justified since the Nova would work on 500MHz CPUs. Those who could afford it would probably have a higher-end CPU anyway.
WinTV PVR-PCI (Solo)
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Conexant Fusion 878A
- Program Interface: Altera flex EPF6016ATC144-3
- MPEG Encoder: Vision Tech Kfir
This is the original, 450000-series Hauppauge PVR card; launched in late 2000. It uses a different chipset than subsequent PVR models, but has the same basic functionality. It has not received any driver updates since February 2002, and has been moved to Hauppauge's legacy product area.
The card accepts S-Video, separate coaxial analogue TV and FM radio antenna, and 1/8" line-level audio input. It has two audio output connectors: 1/8" line out, and a 4-pin connector for direct analogue audio output to a sound card. It is also bundled with an infrared remote control and receiver.
WinTV PVR-USB (Uranus)
- Video Decoder/PCI Interface: Philips SAA7113H
- Chipset: iCompression iTVC12
USB 1.0 edition of the original PVR card. 2 diff PVR USB where made. 43x0x are 6MB, and can do Half D1 only. 43x1x are 12MB, and can do Full D1.
WinTV PVR-PCI II
- Chipset: unknown
Revised edition of the WinTV PVR-PCI; launched in late 2002. The drivers refer to the PVR-150 and PVR-250 as the PVR-PCI II (the latter being the original "PVR-PCI II"). The PVR-PCI II name is generally only used by OEMs.
