http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/ Engadget HD Comments for Ask Engadget HD: What's the best USB HD tuner? http://hd.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://hd.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2009 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Jul 30th 2008 12:45PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/
All that can be said for it is that it works, but I expect a lot more than that. It might work better through media centre or Nero Home but I haven't tried to see.

It's a shame because the hardware seems pretty good. If there is one thing that annoys me it is a company which puts so much effort into good hardware and then ruin those efforts with trash software.]]>Jul 30th 2008 12:53PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Jul 30th 2008 1:13PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Jul 31st 2008 4:56PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/
So don't say that USB can't hack it, because it can. Whether or not your USB device has the hardware necessary to pump that much data is something you will need to raise with your hardware provider.

If the USB2 bus is 480mbit/s and even the highest bandwidth channel requires 20mbit/s, your USB2 bus can handle 24 simultaneous (lets say 23 because of overhead) OTA streams before running out of bandwidth.

USB2 isn't the problem.]]>Jul 31st 2008 10:55PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Jul 30th 2008 1:21PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Jul 30th 2008 1:23PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Jul 30th 2008 1:23PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/
If it says "Pinnacle" on it, it's junk. I had two of them (silly me), and neither could make a decent recording even using its own software (also junk). pinnacle really sucks. Don't be fooled by their QAM claims - to use that you need updates from their website and their own software. And to use these in Win Media center, you need to download a special media center encoder for the Pinnacle stick. "Stick" is right!

I have 2 AverMedia boxes (not sticks, but they *are* USB) that have hardware encoding in them and they work great. One of them does QAM, but only through Avermedia's software.

On Mac, the Elgato stuff works well via USB. I have the USB stick tuner and it's fine.

]]>Jul 30th 2008 2:30PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/
I have a avermedia usb volar atsc tuner that is very sensitive and can be bought of ebay for 40 dollars or less and off of new egg for 60 ish. The included software isn't great but it does work for simple viewing of live tv.]]>Jul 30th 2008 4:16PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Jul 30th 2008 5:08PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Jul 31st 2008 12:58PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/
Don't listen to the naysayers!]]>Mar 26th 2009 1:00PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Jul 31st 2008 4:30AMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/
I have nothing to compare it to so, my comments are limited as follows:

Plusses:

1. Works with Ubuntu - you can use it to make a MythTV box etc.
2. Pretty solid, didn't do anything out of the ordinary, which is good.

Negatives:

1. Reception seemed to be "ok" rather than good. My Dish Network 622 probably does the best reception of all my OTA channels. This had problems my TV has when it's not using the Dish box. For example, ABC here has a very strong signal but the digital signal stalls a great deal - when I view the analog version its clear that while the signal is strong there's a lot of ghosting = signal is bouncing off of several nearby structures to interfere with itself. Radio designers generally implement something called a comb filter to get rid of this problem from digital signals, but this widget doesn't do that.

2. Gets hot. Very hot. I'm bothered its going to damage itself by overheating at some point.

FWIW, I'm sure some would point out it's very basic: it only does OTA ATSC. You can't use it for analog signals, and I'm not sure it works with digital cable either.


Some of the comments above are way off base BTW. USB has plenty of bandwidth. USB2 has a maximum data rate exceeding 400Mbps. ATSC maxes out at 20Mbps per channel. You'll be using 5% of your bandwidth with this device, you can probably get away with attaching a hub and a USB drive to the same port!
]]>Jul 31st 2008 10:30AMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/
Correction, the HVR 950 is a hybrid tuner, it does both ATSC and NTSC (analog), I use it. The HVR 950Q (pictured above) also does clear QAM (digital cable) in addition to ATSC and NTSC. I haven't tried that one.]]>Jul 31st 2008 2:50PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/]]>Jul 31st 2008 2:28PMhttp://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/http://hd.engadget.com/2008/07/30/ask-engadget-hd-whats-the-best-usb-hd-tuner/Aug 2nd 2008 12:06PM