Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,731 words · ~8 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Hage HD PVR 2. This is the gaming
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edition and now includes some pretty significant benefits over the previous
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HD PVR. So, for one thing, you've got
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zero delay HDMI pass through, which is pretty freaking awesome because
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especially if you're using it for game streaming or game commentating or
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anything like that, you can't have any kind of an extra delay or lag added by a
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device that you're using to record video because then how are you going to
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actually play properly? Okay, so instructions here are it's pretty
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straightforward. To open, pull sides. Oh, oh, oh, there we go. Then it comes
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apart a little something like this. So this looks upon initial inspection like
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a very complete package of things that are included. So let's open up the box
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itself really quick here and just have a Okay, the size is a little bit or the um
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the dimensions of it are a little bit weird. Makes it look kind of like futuristic and UFO if UFO is a word. So
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the first thing we find inside is a USB cable. This is USB A to B. There you go.
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Very, very supple cable. So, very soft. Very nice. All right. I'm just going to
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put garbage in there as we go. The next thing we find inside appears to be a
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power brick. All right. Power brick. Oh,
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no. That goes there. That goes there. Next, we've got ah component breakout.
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So, this will be handy if you do have any HD devices that are not digital. So,
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here we've got uh RGB and then stereo
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audio connectors. And then those go to a
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proprietary connector that plugs into the presumably back of the hage unit,
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although I don't see where that goes.
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No, this is for Xbox. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, they've included an Xbox connector
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which will do something supposedly. We'll be back. And it's a PS3 cable. And
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the reason I couldn't figure out what the heck it did was because there's an
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additional cable that you actually need to do anything with it. So, this is also
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an RGB and stereo audio cable that actually does plug into this. So, if you
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did need to go from PS3 out to component
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for whatever reason, then you could do this to go into there we go the HDPVR
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and then you can go out via HDMI.
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So yeah, then we've got two more HDMI
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cables as well as their uh their
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software that's included. So you should download the latest off of the Hage website. And I'm just going to clean
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things up a little bit and we will be back in a moment to show you the unit itself. Hage actually includes some
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notes that we should probably talk about very briefly. So because PS3 does not
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allow recording over the HDMI output, you have to use the component. That's
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why it has these adapters. You have to use component out to record from PS3.
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However, it should be noted that this connector with the current firmware
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might be a little bit sensitive to vibration. So, just put the PVR to
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somewhere where it's not going to be sort of knocked around. I mean, that that should be common sense anyway. They
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say they got a lot of calls about it. Come on. But come on, guys. You don't bump an analog connection while it's
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connected and then expect it to work 100%. So, just Yeah, just plain don't do
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that. Um, also make sure you put it in the right way. They says they got a lot
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of calls about that. I don't know why because it was pretty obvious to me that
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it doesn't go in this way. So, you turn it around and there you go. It's plugged
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in. Push down. Get it? The push is down
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when you push push down. Don't worry about it. Uh if you're using with an ATI
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graphics card, AMD Radeon graphics card, then you might have issues with um the
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latest drivers. So, just turn off hardware acceleration. These are their
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tips and tricks. It's nice of them to include that on a little, you know, piece of paper that they pack at the
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last minute. make sure that some of these frequently asked questions are
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addressed before people have to, you know, pick up a phone and talk to a
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human being and figure out how to use the product because I don't want to like
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bother with that when I buy something new. I want it to just work. So, the top
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of the unit has a gorgeous brushed aluminum finish. It looks like actual
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aluminum. Yep, it is. So, make sure you don't touch it too much or leave
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fingerprint stains on it because it'll look pretty sweet as long as you don't
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do that. Power button is here on the top. And then it's got sort of a a gray
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trim that goes around the entire outside of it. The bottom is full of ventilation
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holes. So there's a heat sink right there that you can clearly see through the perforations. I hope you can see it.
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I can see it. So I'll you'll have to take my word for it. Trust me, it's there. And then the ventilation goes in
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the bottom and out the back. It looks like it doesn't need a ton of cooling
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though because these feet are quite low profile. So once you put this down,
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there's not going to be room for a ton of air flow to be coming in and out of
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the unit. So, I wouldn't put this on top of something like an AV receiver, for
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example. I'd want to put it on something that doesn't uh exhaust heat because you
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don't want to be using what are cooling holes to heat the unit up. Just
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something to think about. Um, so in terms of setup, it's pretty
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straightforward. There's a number of different ways you can hook it up, and they actually have diagrams in the uh in
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the included quick start guide that make it pretty simple, but here's your power
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in 6volt DC in. You have a USB connector
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to go out to a PC, laptop, or desktop. There's that that component in that uses
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this sort of weird harness to connect to it. I would have preferred if they just
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had uh I guess yeah, it would take up a lot of space on the back to have fable
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component connectors, but okay. HDMI in, HDMI out. So, that can be used for
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recording a PC, for recording an Xbox 360, or anything else that isn't HDCP
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protected. That's why they have to go with that analog signal for the
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PlayStation 3. So, we'll have a look at some of the different ways you can hook
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it up. So, here's with a PlayStation 3, you're using that weird component in
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thing. USB out to a computer and then HDMI, HDMI out to a TV. So, this is for
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streaming. And then next we've got so game console here, I guess. Okay. Not
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sure what their point is here. So, let's go with this one. Xbox 360 HDMI in, HDMI
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out, USB out to a laptop or desktop PC, and then out to a TV. So the idea is
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that the HDMI is a lag free pass through and then USB is where you're actually
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recording so that you can upload to something like
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um to something like YouTube or you can stream using XSplit or whatever else the
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case may be. I don't know if you guys are I don't know if you guys know this, but there is a huge thing going on with
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game streaming and game commentary where people are doing sort of like a webcam
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view of themselves. They're sitting there playing a game. They're talking about it while they play or I mean a lot
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of these guys are basically just vloggers. So they're playing a video game but they're actually talking about
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something totally unrelated just so you have something to watch and something to
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listen to at the same time and they're not actually necessarily the same thing
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as each other. So what is this for? It's for if you don't want to hook up an
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entire separate computer with a dedicated capture card in order to do
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like a like we had uh we had a setup we did before with the uh Aver Media Live
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Gamer HD where we actually had a computer that was set up to do the
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capture and streaming. So this is if you just want to run a little box like this
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to uh hook that up instead of running it through a computer directly. So thank
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you for checking out this unboxing online as tech tips. Don't forget to subscribe for more unboxings, reviews,
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and other computer videos. I was asked, what's the point of this if uh you have
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to have a PC anyway compared to having like a dedicated PCI Express capture
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card? Well, the point is you can use a laptop because it's using H.264 encoding
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and it does have a hardware encoder inside here. It means that just using
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that USB 2 connection, it can stream as much data as it needs to in order to
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record a high quality 1080p 30fps video
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that you can then do whatever you want with after the fact. It should also be
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noted that I actually made a mistake when I was unboxing this. This is the record button so that you can press
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record and be sort of ready at a moment's notice to record or not record
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something, not a power button, which it's just sort of on all the time once
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it's plugged in.