Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket review

The Haupaugge HD PVR Rocket is a compact, portable device that lets you record videos of your games playing on computers and consoles. You can then use a free utility to edit those videos and upload them to YouTube so that your friends and others can watch them. If you’ve ever wished you’d recorded a segment of gameplay so that you could prove you’d completed something, to show your skill in a game or explain gameplay techniques to help others, the HD PVR Rocket could be for you.

The HD PVR Rocket is very similar in function to the Hauppauge HD PVR 2. However, the HD PVR Rocket is much prettier and better designed than the HD PVR 2, as it requires only USB power to work rather than a power supply. This means you don’t have to worry about finding another mains socket to power the Rocket, further aiding portability.

Other design improvements include the use of a large, red button to trigger the recording of videos. The HD PVR 2’s used a black triangular button to record video, which wasn’t easy to see because the rest of the HD PVR 2 was black. Although we quickly became accustomed to the position of the HD PVR2’s Record button, we prefer the red colouring of the Rocket’s Record button because it’s easier to see in your peripheral version. If you’re playing a game, taking your eyes off the screen often invites disaster, so being able to quickly bat the Rocket’s Record button without having to look at the device directly is a useful improvement.

As with the HD PVR 2, the Rocket is bordered on three sides by a lighting strip that uses different colours to denote the Rocket’s status, so you can know at a glance whether or not it is recording, for example. The lights are bright, so as with the Record button you’ll have no problem seeing them in your peripheral vision.

The HD PVR Rocket can be used with PCs and all the major consoles although, like the HD PVR 2, the Rocket can’t record HDCP protected video streams, so you must connect the device to your PS3 with the component cable that comes with the HD PVR Rocket rather than a HDMI cable.

Connecting the Rocket to your computer or console is straightforward. The Rocket has an HDMI input and an HDMI output. You connect the output of your graphics card or games console to the Rocket’s input and then connect the rocket to your TV or monitor with the Rocket’s HDMI output.

From there, you can record video in one of two ways. The easiest is to insert a USB flash drive into the Rocket’s USB port and hit the Record button. The Rocket will then record video directly to the USD flash drive until you hit the Record button again.

There’s no need to format the drive, which means you can use whatever drive you have to hand without having to back up its contents first or wait for it to be initialised. This provides a great deal of convenience and expediency, which is important when gaming, as you want a device that’s unobtrusive and simply works without fuss.