The unit itself is surprisingly small and light. Smaller than both consoles it serves and a lot lighter, it is formed with rigid, thin plastic. The top of the box has a faux brushed dark grey aluminium effect 'lid' while the main unit is a satin black. The unit feels fairly cheap due to the thin plastics used and while the light weight is certainly welcomed, I can't help thinking that a steel or aluminium casing would have been better employed as an enclosure. That said as long as you take care, it should serve its purpose by protecting the components inside.



The front of the unit has a silver power-on/off button to the far left coupled with a status LED (blue on/amber standby). Adjacent to this is an IR receiver but strangely Hauppauge have elected not to include any remote control with this version of the PVR which was a shame as it is included with the non-gaming edition. To the right we see that there is an S-Video and composite ports to use if you don't want/need/have the luxury of HD and only require standard definition recording.



The main connectivity is to be found on the rear though with a full suite of input/output component ports. Next to the colour coded component ports are optical in/out ports (no cable provided). The 'Blaster' port is for an infra-red remote extension (not included) and next to this is the USB port which connects to the PC. Lastly, there's the power supply adapter port.



The unit itself doesn't have a hard drive, a Blue-ray player or a TV tuner on board so nothing can actually be stored on the unit itself, hence the requirement to connect it up to a PC. Think of the Hauppauge HD PVR as a middle man; a tool to take video from the console and transport that data to your PC for encoding and storing. In the truest sense of the word, the Hauppauge HD PVR is not a PVR at all but a simple video capture unit as it has no ability to record video on its own unlike a traditional PVR such as a SKY+ box for example.

Let's take a look at the setup and software installation required to capture video from our console...