AVERMEDIA AVERTV USB 2.0

The AVerTV tuner from AVerMedia (£49 inc. VAT) is an attractive peripheral, with a simple square design and plain silver casing. Included in the pack is a leatherette case, USB cable, phone to RF cable and an audio cable.

The driver and software were easy to install and the device is powered through the USB port. Unfortunately, the sound doesn't come through the USB connection, so you will need to connect the sound cable to your line-in or mic port.

In comparison to the other units in this review, the picture quality is above average. We did, however, have some trouble with the sound. It was often out of sync with the picture, making it disconcerting to watch. We found that the severity of this problem differed depending on the channel, with BBC2 completely unaffected.

As usual with most PVR software, you can name the tuned-in channels and disable unused ones, but you cannot re-order them. So frequency channel 23 is ITV, while 26 is BBC1. You have to remember the exact numbers to go directly to them, and using the UP and DOWN functions doesn't go through the TV stations in a logical sequence. Surprisingly, this problem applies to almost all TV tuners out there.

Recording was impressive, and there were no sound-sync problems at all. The display tells you the current file size and the amount of free space left on your hard drive. One complaint was that you couldn't pause for ad breaks while recording, which makes the file sizes unnecessarily big. The picture-in-picture feature means you can keep an eye on live TV while playing a recording.

The time-shifting feature is designed to allow you to pause live TV and there are three quality settings to choose from. However, we found all levels produced very poor picture quality. Since we were using a laptop with a 7200rpm hard drive, we were disappointed with this feature.

The AVerTV USB 2.0 was the best of the bunch, producing adequate live pictures and extremely good recorded images.

RATING: 7
PRICE: £41/£49(EX/INC. VAT)
CONTACT:
www.overclockers.co.uk  
0870 443 0880

LIFEVIEW TV WALKER

The LifeView TV Walker (£76 inc. VAT) is the most flash looking unit of the group. The blue and silver casing and rounded end make it look more like a clamshell fashion phone than a TV tuner. The large heat grille on the base of the unit gave us a premonition of what was to come.

The tuner pack includes a USB cable, NTSC converter, PAL converter, S-Video to composite video connecter, audio cable, remote cable and a remote control. The unit is USB powered and also gets its sound via the USB connection as well, which makes life a lot easier when connecting the unit.

Installing the driver and software went smoothly enough. However, the provided manual was unhelpful and badly translated, but at least it was more thorough than the small pamphlet that came with the VisionPlus unit.

Once the TV Walker was installed we ran an auto-tune. The picture quality looked good, but the unit didn't find BBC2. We tuned it in manually without any problems, but we couldn't get sound on any of the channels - just static. The bezel edging around pictures was nice and small, but the control panel skin looked amateurish.

Then our problems started. After going into Settings to change the recording mode from MPEG-1 to MPEG-2, the picture on all the channels instantly dropped and we were unable to tune them back in. We uninstalled and reinstalled the software. However, we still could not tune the unit in.

During this time the unit got very hot, the metal connectors were too hot to hold for any length of time. The large grille on the underside of the unit did little to help. Unfortunately, we were unable to get the TV Walker to tune in again after this, which is a shame because the picture quality looked promising - even if the sound didn't work.

RATING: 4
PRICE: £65/£76 (EX/INC. VAT)
CONTACT:
www.novatechdirect.com
0845 345 0088

MSI VOX TV BOX

The Vox TV Box (£51 inc. VAT) is made by Taiwanese company, Micro-Star
International. Included in the pack along with the TV Tuner are a small remote control, a USB extension lead, audio cable, carry case, and a video and audio input adapter – this includes composite Video In, S-Video In, Audio In and left and right ports. A power adapter is also available as an optional extra.

As well as the hardware drivers, MSI has also bundled the TV viewing software and
InterVideo WinDVD Creator. When it comes to getting the system up and running, the Vox is somewhat lacking, as the provided instructions are inadequate for anyone who doesn’t already know how to set up the tuner. In the ‘How to use the Vox’ section of the paper manual it simply tells you to open the software and ‘use the
mouse to control the function’.

The InterVideo software’s Help section offers some assistance, but we felt the absence of a proper user manual made the set-up process unnecessarily complicated. The software has a basic set-up wizard, that should help you to get started, but it’s not the user-friendliest application we’ve seen.

The actual layout is fine to use once you’ve worked out what everything does. However, some people will prefer the immediacy of the remote control, which is plain and basic but also functional and lightweight. After one failed attempt to gain a picture with a portable antenna, we tried again with a wall socket aerial. This time we were able to get all five channels up on screen. Although picture quality was good enough to see the programme, it was still very fuzzy. It also tended to jump back and pause for no apparent reason, making it impossible to watch.

Finally, the aerial would lose the picture after a few minutes, obliging you to flick through all the other channels until you found your programme again.

RATING: 3
PRICE: £43/£51 (EX/INC. VAT)
CONTACT:
www.overclockers.co.uk  
0870 443 0880

VISIONPLUS VISION DTV

The Vision Plus box (£90 inc. VAT) is the largest of the tuners, although it’s still small and lightweight enough to be carried as part of your mobile kit. This TV tuner is supplied with a small portable antenna and a remote control.

Installing the hardware is unusually laborious for a modern device and you have to install two sets of drivers in order to get it to work. Once you’ve done this, you then need to try to set up the actual tuner. As with the Lifeview and MSI Vox, this was far from straightforward. The pictures in the instruction pamphlet do not match up to what is actually in front of you on the screen, while the PDF user guide was just a blank document when we opened it up.

When you try to pick your country you are faced with an almost unintelligible list consisting of things such as SED, NLD and BOR. Eventually we managed to locate our area under SED (we never found the UK) and picked Crystal, as we guessed that it was asking for our nearest TV transmitter, which was Crystal Palace.

When we finally managed get the system up and running, we found a good selection of digital channels available. However, when it came to viewing them, we were disappointed. Although picture quality was better than that of the MSI device, once again the images were jumpy and full of glitches. We found it more watchable than the MSI unit, but you would have to be desperate to watch TV if you are prepared to put up with the poor quality of images.

There are a number of other features included in the software, such as recording television shows and taking snap shots. But, since we couldn’t even get the television to work properly, it’s unlikely that these features will be of much use to you. It seems that portable TV tuners still have a long way to go before they’re ready to be unleashed on the unsuspecting public.

RATING: 4
PRICE: £77/£90(EX/INC. VAT)
CONTACT:
www.entagroup.com

01952 428888