Getting to Know the Colossus

When Hauppauge introduced the original HD PVR in 2008 its component plus TOSLINK (optical S/PDIF) capture of 5.1 Dolby Digital and up to 1080i analog video was a revolutionary, and long overdue, shift for the home theater PC (HTPC) based digital video recorder (DVR). Finally there was a viable option for recording DRM-free high definition (HD) content. The device was far from perfect however, suffering from stability (I RMA’d four personally); furthermore, as a large external USB device, it didn’t provide the most appealing form factor for many installations. Today we’re looking at Hauppauge’s second iteration of the HD PVR concept, this time as a standard height PCIe x1 device dubbed Colossus. It offers all of the previous capture options while adding HDMI input to the feature list.

Hardware

The single slot, full height PCIe x1 card has a simple layout with all of the components exposed. There is not much to point out besides the lack of any cooling on the ViXS encoding chip and the presence of Hauppauge’s standard analog connection header along the top. To utilize the auxiliary inputs a daughter card (not included with the Colossus) is required. I have one in the parts bin so it was possible to test the feature, which adds s-video and a second composite/stereo capture option to the options provided directly on the device.

Looking at the native inputs we find HDMI, two breakout connectors for component (YPbPr) / stereo audio, two TOSLINK (optical S/PDIF), and a port to attach the infrared (IR) receiver/blaster. The top breakout/TOSLINK combo provides input and the bottom output for audio/video pass through anytime the PC is powered including standby (S3), hibernate (S4) and soft-off (S5) states. HDMI is the most interesting not only because it is new, but because of the usage scenarios it could enable were the full capabilities of the connection provided. Unfortunately (and understandably due to legal and licensing issues), this is not the case; instead, the HDMI input provides the same feature set as component plus TOSLINK (up to 1080i and Dolby Digital support). Most important, there’s no support for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), so HDMI capture will not work with devices that require it.

In practice, the HDMI link did record most channels/programs from the cable STB (Set-Top Box), but it was not 100% reliable as some files had no audio or video—I assume because HDCP was active in those cases. I did not notice a significant difference between HDMI and component output from the RNG 110 (using Comcast in Chicago), but results will vary between STB and providers so it is worth an attempt if the box has an HDMI output, because the streams will skip a digital to analog conversion.

There’s plenty in the package besides the card; you get a remote with IR hardware and batteries, two breakout dongles, analog audio/video cables, a driver CD (not shown), and some “value-add” software including a copy of Arcsoft ShowBiz. One of the applications Hauppauge provides with the Colossus is a system tray application that drives the IR receiver and blaster, but compatibly with other software products is very limited for the remote and changing channels with the included device is very clunky. Only one blaster is supported per PC, there’s limited set top box compatibility (none of the Pace profiles worked with the RNG110 used in this evaluation), and we experienced general stability issues both with the system tray executable and IR blasting in general.

All of this led us to a cursory evaluation of the remote. For those using this—or any STB based capture device—options like FireWire, serial, or Ethernet based channel changing are much better options. I would prefer an OEM/bare version of the card with just the dongles for those planning to use it with SageTV (or when drivers are available, Windows Media Center), passing the savings for unnecessary hardware and software to end users. The current package starts at $139 online, so removing the frills should get the Colossus down to $100 or less.

Software Analysis

As mentioned earlier, an OEM version of Arcsoft’s ShowBiz comes with the Colossus, providing a good way for capturing non-TV based content. Features such as automated Electronic Program Guide (EPG) based recording, conflict resolution, and tuner selection found on modern DVRs are not included in the product. It can capture in a variety of different formats depending on need including TS, M2TS and MP4. The device’s HDMI and component + TOSLINK inputs are the most compelling, since they provide the most capability. Should other inputs be required, the table below summarizes the supported audio/video input mappings. There’s not much to say, but more flexibility when matching the optical input to analog inputs would be ideal. UPDATE: Hauppauge heard our feedback and updated the device to allow for much greater flexibility in an updated driver (29111).  With the updated driver, any audio/video input (with the exception of HDMI audio) can be mapped with any other input.

For those planning to use the Colossus on Windows XP or Vista outside of ShowBiz, it is important to note that globally registered DirectShow filters are not provided. This is a change for the version of Total Media Theatre bundled with the original HD PVR. Windows 7 includes support for H.264/AVC (and AAC, if encoding PCM audio with the device), so this is not an issue on that platform. It might be possible to use the “checkactivate hack” to work around this issue and provide support in third-party applications, but I did not test it.

For what it does, ShowBiz provides a good solution for encoding audio and video with the Colossus. Unfortunately, it does not enable the more interesting use case (i.e. recording HD cable/satellite content at native resolution) with a reasonable degree of usability, nor does it provide the codecs necessary to consume the content produced by the device in a friendlier environment. As such, I question the value of the software for those who will use the Colossus with other software, and again would like to see Hauppauge offer a barebones version of the card without ShowBiz.

Currently, SageTV (shown above with Sage Diamond Theme) is the only HTPC DVR product with native Colossus support. It is possible to use the device in Windows Media Center via a third party product, and native driver support is supposed to be coming soon. Since neither is official yet, and they should be functionally equivalent (more on this later) to the capture capability provided, we will use SageTV as a proxy for the “recording TV” scenario.

The input matrix is a limitation of the device, so it is consistent across capture applications with a simplified set of the same options observed in ShowBiz also presented by SageTV. Like the original HD PVR, the Colossus preserves the native format of encoded audio (i.e. Dolby Digital is stored as Dolby Digital), but currently encodes uncompressed audio (PCM) as AAC with video content encoded to AVC (H.264) in the native resolution and frame rate. We tested both HDMI and Component + SPDIF as they provide the most flexibility for capturing 480i ([email protected] FPS), 720p ([email protected] FPS), and 1080i ([email protected] FPS) video with analog, Dolby Pro Logic (two channels), or Dolby Digital (5.1 channels) audio.

Testing and Evaluation

With an original HD PVR and Ceton InfiniTV 4 Digital Cable Tuner (DCT) on hand, it provided us with the opportunity to record the same content using MediaInfo and perform visual inspections to document differences in quality. For the results above, the Colossus and HD PVR were configured in-line using the YPbPr/TOSLINK pass-through from the STB. They were set to use the highest recording profile in SageTV, with SageDCT used to capture the raw TS stream from the InfiniTV 4 as a reference point. The settings used by the various devices are summarized in the following table.

There are differences in the bitrate and AVC profiles used by the two Hauppauge devices; the Colossus uses a higher rate for 1080i and the HD PVR uses higher bitrates for 720p and 480i. The InfiniTV 4 was a third set of values. With three points of reference and digital source content, there is little noticeable difference between the captured files in real terms. (If you’re interested in seeing clips of the videos, let us know and we’ll see about including download links.

Alongside the comparative testing, the Colossus was also evaluated for the overall quality and “watchability” of recordings captured at native resolution from the STB. We recorded sixty files with a 33% distribution per resolution at random intervals and channels, and then sampled at five to ten points in each file for issues related to audio and video. We looked for A/V synchronization problems, stutter, and dropouts, and the final result is an 8.33% fail rate. Most of the “fail” issues only occurred in specific locations in the files, and while annoying they were not severe enough to abandon playback. However, there were also entire recordings with no audio or significant enough issues with audio drops or video playback that continued viewing was very unpleasant or impossible.

Before moving on it is interesting to note that the maximum bitrate available in ShowBiz and via the encoder’s property page (shown below) is quite a bit higher (~20Mbps) than what is used by SageTV when selecting the best rate (~14 Mbps). It is unlikely that the value of encoding at this high a level would result in a great enough pay off to justify the increased file size given the bitrate of most TV content, but it is good to know that it is possible if the content warrants it.

Additional Testing

I love it when my interests in the HTPC space overlap, so having observed the difference in bitrate capabilities and issues with file capture it provided an easy excuse to start writing code against the Colossus and figure out how to drive the device. For anyone who has done any playing with DirectShow, the following screenshot of the capture graph in GraphStudio should be very familiar. It demonstrates the four components necessary to enable file capture from the device with the property pages for the “Capture” and “Encoder” filters (which are what ShowBiz exposes through its GUI) displayed. The file sink—the component at the end that writes the TS packets to disk as they are output from the encoder (in this case a slightly customized version of the “Dump” sample included in the Windows SDK)—is the only filter not provided by the drivers.

Using that as a starting point I wrote a simple application to prototype input selection (it supports component + S/PDIF or HDMI) and filter configuration. Using standard DirectShow interfaces, I was able to reproduce both the capture issues and the inconsistent bitrate values observed with ShowBiz and SageTV, where after setting the device to the maximum bitrate (~20Mbps) through the encoder interface it actually uses ~14Mbps. I have asked Hauppauge to provide documentation for programming against the device in case there is a different, non-obvious, mechanism for configuring the card, but they did not provide it in time for this review. For anyone interested in looking at the source code for the application it is available here.

Anyone who made the jump to the original HD PVR when it was released will remember that the commercial scanning story was a bit troubled. Fortunately, the work that was done to support the AVC TS files created with it carries over to those generated using the Colossus. Applications like ShowAnalyzer are able to scan the files and detect commercials in them.

System Impact

While recording quality is critical, it cannot be the only criteria used to measure a “tuner”. We performed some additional testing to assess the overall impact on a typical HTPC system when using the Colossus. It is more difficult to create a “worst case” environment with a full height card than would be possible if it were low-profile, since we can’t put the Colossus into some of the smaller HTPC cases. However, we did try to simulate use in a hotter chassis by utilizing the highest TDP CPU we had on hand as well as removing all but one of the case fans in the Ahanix D4 used in testing. Here are the specs for our test HTPC; this is hardly state-of-the-art, but it works well for our purposes.

With our test setup, we measured five temperatures at sixty-minute intervals while recording HD content. The five points we measures are the system (chipset), CPU, hard drive, and case, and the surface temperature of the ViXS encoding chip on the Colossus. System, CPU, and hard drive numbers were captured using SpeedFan, while internal case temperature was measured with a thermometer placed inside the case. We used an infrared thermometer to check the ViXS chip (after briefly removing the top of the case).

As we can see from the graph above the Colossus has almost no thermal impact in its environment, with the only significant gains measured by the hard drive and the card itself—both understandable given that is where the majority of recording load is realized. While temperatures weren’t noticeably impacted, we also checked system power use.

Taking a look at power usage, the system’s draw was measured at the wall with a P3 Kill-A-Watt EZ P4460. We checked power draw first without the Colossus, then installed it and checked idle and recording power use. I was somewhat surprised by the initial difference (7.6W) after installing the card, but after looking at the results while recording where the delta between the two states is probably due to additional hard drive load it appears that the card does not utilize a low power idle state when not capturing data.

Having had a somewhat rough experience with the original HD PVR’s stability, we put the Colossus through a series of extended stress tests. The good news is that I was not able to reproduce the lockup problems that plagued its predecessor. Unfortunately, the device consistently caused BSODs (Blue Screen of Death) after sixteen to twenty hours of continuous recording. The conditions required to reproduce this issue are uncommon for HTPC DVR use so it is unlikely that most users would experience it. However, it does make the device currently unsuitable for some scenarios like a security system. We notified Hauppauge of the issue and provided a memory dump to help isolate the root cause. Hopefully they can trace the problem and patch it in the near future.

Final Thoughts

Obviously the Colossus still has some rough edges. Ideally, all HTPC and technology in general would work without issue, but unfortunately that’s not the case, particularly in this market. In context, it is regrettably normal for early drivers on devices like the Colossus to have problems, including much greater stability issues than observed with this device. Even the 8.3% recording fail rate is well below what I experienced with the original HD PVR during the first months of use.

Clearly Hauppauge has work to do, both in improving recording quality and driver stability under extreme duress. However, component (YPbPr) + S/PDIF (TOSLINK) and HDMI capture options, alongside greater reliability than even the original HD PVR can currently provide, makes the Colossus is a worthy successor in this space.

If you’re after hardware that just works, you might want to hold off a few more months to let the drivers (and the HTPC community) work out some of the remaining kinks. If you’re part of that community, or just an A/V enthusiast, the Colossus is a nice option to add to the list.

Pros:

• Native resolution capture for 480i, 720p and 1080i with Dolby Digital 5.1
• HDMI support for those with STB that do not use HDCP
• PCIe format
• Component (YPbPr) and S/PDIF (TOSLINK) pass-through

Cons:

• Not all recordings are watchable
• Software/hardware bundle adds unnecessary cost with not additional value for DVR use
• No HDMI pass-through
• BSOD when continuously recording for more than sixteen hours
• Full height card leaves low-profile HTPC users out

Thanks to Hauppauge for providing the review sample.