BIOS: Technology Means Business

Hauppauge has launched a PC-based software application that allows you to record TV shows for portable video players, including Apple’s iPod and Sony’s PSP.

‘Wing’ (is this the real name, seriously? - Ed!) is a software package enabling you to record TV shows on a PC for playback on Sony’s Playstation Portable (PSP), Apple’s video iPod, and other portable video players. Wing can also be used to convert existing TV recordings to the PSP and iPod format.

Available as a download from Hauppauge’s international www.hauppauge.com/wing Web site, or from selected UK retailers, the $24.95 package complements Hauppauge’s PC-based WinTV-PVR and HVR personal video recorders.

Live TV shows can be recorded with a single click and played on a PC or TV set as well as a portable video player. Wing records in H.264, MPEG-4 and Divx formats, and also will record directly to a recordable DVD disk.

The Wing application comes with three components: a plug-in for the popular TitanTV Internet-based electronic program guide for automatic recording of TV shows, a plug-in for Hauppauge’s WinTV Scheduler for manual TV record scheduling, and an off-line recorder which will turn MPEG-2 videos into any of the formats supported by Wing.

‘The emergence of portable video players like the Sony PSP and video iPod has created a demand for an easy solution for recording live TV shows for playback on these devices,’ said Yehia Oweiss, Hauppauge Digital’s UK Managing Director.

‘WinTV-PVRs have been very popular for recording TV on PCs, and Wing will be an invaluable tool for the many WinTV-PVR users who also have a portable video player.’

Wing is currently supported for the following Hauppauge TV tuners: WinTV-PVR-150, WinTV-PVR-250, WinTV-PVR-350, WinTV-PVR-USB2, WinTV-HVR-900, WinTV-HVR-1100, WinTV-HVR-1300, WinTV-NOVA-T-USB2 and WinTV-NOVA-S+ and is available for purchase directly from Hauppauge.

Wing records for portable video players in two formats: MPEG-4 and H.264. It also records in an MPEG-4 variation, DivX. Both the PSP and iPod play either MPEG-2 or H.264, while many other portable video players can play DivX files.

Wing has defaults for the most common recording formats, but these defaults can be changed to give different combinations of video quality and file size.

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