AVerMedia AVerTV DVB-T PCI card

If you want to bring your digital TV and VCR onto your computer screen and place the controls firmly within the grasp of your mouse, AVerMedia's AVerTV DVB-T PCI card could be the answer. It combines a TV tuner with personal video recorder (PVR) capability and delivers it to your desktop in an integrated software interface. What's more, it uses the new DVB-T digital broadcasting standard so you'll be able to watch or listen to all the freely available digital terrestrial TV and audio channels in high quality and record them to your hard disk.

Installation is simple enough for those who are used to getting their hands dirty inside their PCs, but the provided documentation is decidedly thin. There are diagrams to show you what goes where but you'd better hope nothing goes wrong, as there's no troubleshooting guide and the description of the software stops right after installation and initial setup. Unfortunately, we did have a little trouble - the TV image was somewhat jerky with break-ups in sound and vision. AVerMedia dealt with this problem swiftly by emailing us a new driver, although this isn't available on its Web site at the time of writing. We feel that the inexperienced user may become somewhat frustrated at the lack of printed help material.

Once installation is complete, you'll need to wait a few moments while the software performs an initial scan of the available channels and then you're up and running. Although you'll have to figure the software out for yourself, it's actually quite well-laid out and simple to use. From here, you can watch TV in a window or in full-screen mode, bring up a channel selector (which has the channel names automatically added), record TV direct to hard disk or schedule a programme to be recorded via integration with a third-party electronic programme guide (EPG) such as TVTV (www.tvtv.co.uk). The time-shift function allows you to pause the live TV program you're watching and then pick up where you left off.

Unfortunately, there's no support for any of the interactive features of digital television so there's no red button to press to join in with Big Brother, although EPG information such as Now and Next is promised soon. Teletext support is an optional extra but wasn't provided in our review sample. What you do get, however, is analogue composite and S-Video capture and a nice infrared remote control (batteries included). This makes it a great choice if you're building a home theatre PC, as other analogue sources such as those from external set-top boxes can be seamlessly integrated into the same interface.

The AVerTV DVB-T is attractively priced and offers some good features which are likely to be expanded as the software is further developed. It's a much better choice than an analogue alternative.

Contact: AVerMedia
www.averm.co.uk

Specifications:

• System requirements Windows XP, ME 2000, 98 or SE
• CPU 800MHz Pentium III
• Memory 128MB
• Hard disk space Lots, if you're going to record video
• Graphics VGA card with DirectX 8.0 support and hardware overlay
• Antenna UHF/VHF TV antenna
• Sound card SoundBlaster 16 or better

See also:

GTA Digital PCTV Card Plus

Digital convergence at the tip of your finger.  05 Dec 2003

BlackGold Free to Air Digital PCTV

Use this plug-in card to turn your PC into a home entertainment system.  04 Dec 2003

ECS EZ-TV Tuner Card

Turn your PC into a TV.  24 Nov 2003

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