Recently Brent Evans had the opportunity to talk with Avermedia about their upcoming USB HD DVR. The new device, which will be shipping in April for $199.99, is set to compete with the Hauppauge HD-PVR. It is an analog HD capture device. This means that it accepts a component video input signal and then transfers that to your computer via USB. The main differences between this and the Hauppauge card are that this device does not include digital audio inputs, but it does have HDMI out for direct pass-through access …

Oh do we have fun this week!  After moving through a ton of reader email and comments (THANK YOU!), Josh and Adam get into the question of fair use and recorded TV.  How long should you be allowed to keep your recordings?  Can you archive them forever or are you obligated to buy the DVD series once it’s available?  We try to focus on these questions this week.  (Notice I said we try.  We stray a bit!)
We had some great emails and comments this week and you’ll find links …

If you’re looking to step up to Blu-ray or if you want to introduce someone else to the quality that the format provides, this holiday season my be the best time ever.  NDP Group is reporting that Blu-ray hardware prices are continuing to drop, with many top name players available in the sub-$200 range.  This points to great holiday sales not only for these brands, which can compete with other consumer electronic devices such as the $199 Wii and other gaming devices, but for the lower quality store brands which …

It looks like Hauppauge, the company that brought us the HD-PVR, which allows you to use the “analog hole” to get HD premium content into Media Center and SageTV, will be jumping into the CableCard space with a tuner by the end of the year.
With the newly announced relaxed restrictions on CableCard installations, enthusiasts will soon be able to start adding them to their Media Center systems without a hack to defeat the OEM requirement.  Hopefully this announcement will be followed by more companies bringing the same thing to the …

Welcome to September here on “Seen in HD”. Just a quick show note: there will be no new show for Sept. 9 (Labor Day Week) and we’ll be back with a new show the week of Sept. 14 when Brent Evans of Geek Tonic joins us for our 2009 Fall TV Season Extravaganza.
In the news on this week’s show, Adam and Phil take a look at a recent FCC ruling that could affect TV viewing on HTPCs and why some of the early furor may have been overdone. Also in …

Welcome back to Seen in HD! After surviving a near catastrophe when Phil’s recording software crashed at the end of taping this week’s show (yay temp files!) we’re back for another look at all things HD.
This week we take a look at some newly announced Blu-ray titles and an “in your dreams” Blu-ray player announcement from McIntosh before jumping into a Blu-ray review of the stunning Baraka.
Shot in 1992 in the rare 70mm format and rescanned at 8k resolution for the entirely new Blu-ray transfer, Baraka is an examination of …

Welcome to the first episode of Seen in HD, a weekly look at all things HD, co-hosted by Phil Lozen and Adam Thursby. Seen in HD aims to examine anything and everything to do with HD video, be it Blu-ray, gaming, broadcast TV, or Web video.
Each show we’ll talk about a few things we’ve seen in the past week in HD and we’ll take a look at what’s coming up in the week ahead as well. We’ll talk Blu-ray each week, examining releases planned for the coming week, and …

Do you have an older home that makes it nearly impossible to run Ethernet cable to your home entertainment center, or into a home office where you already have coax ran? In one way, shape, or form I think we all have been there. A few years ago some companies formed MoCA, Multimedia over Coax Alliance which focused on using coax cable as a transmission medium to send data from one end to the other.
The goal of the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA for short), is to facilitate home …

I’ve admitted on the show and here that I don’t have that really in depth knowledge when it comes to different signals, codecs, containers, etc.,etc.,etc.  Luckily for us though, there is someone out there who does. 
We’ve talked about him on the Entertainment 2.0 podcast, as well as quoted his articles here and now, the Master of Media Center, Ben Drawbaugh of EngadgetHD, has posted a complete primer on everything you need to know about OTA and Cable HD signals.
From Ben’s article:
Typical for the tech industry that the term …