WinTV Nova-T USB2 Digital Freeview TV Receiver

Introduction
I bought this unit from PCWORLD, after first purchasing a DVB Box from ARTEC. The reason I decided to go with this brand is that I already owned a PCI Analogue tuner, and was very impressed with the 3 years I have been using that for. At first I was unsure whether this unit was worth the extra £30 but after getting home and using it for only an hour I was very impressed with the difference, and was comfortable with the extra ...
...itself is very well built, with a solid looking construction. The actual casing appears to be metal with some plastic “bumpers” on the front and back. It is also noted at just how small this unit is, it can easily be hidden at the side of my monitor. The Infra Red remote receiver is built into the unit which saves the need for another external receiver. The back of the unit has connections for the Aerial and the USB cable. The box is ... more

Introduction
I bought this unit from PCWORLD, after first purchasing a DVB Box from ARTEC. The reason I decided to go with this brand is that I already owned a PCI Analogue tuner, and was very impressed with the 3 years I have been using that for. At first I was unsure whether this unit was worth the extra £30 but after getting home and using it for only an hour I was very impressed with the difference, and was comfortable with the extra expense.

DVB Unit
The unit itself is very well built, with a solid looking construction. The actual casing appears to be metal with some plastic “bumpers” on the front and back. It is also noted at just how small this unit is, it can easily be hidden at the side of my monitor. The Infra Red remote receiver is built into the unit which saves the need for another external receiver. The back of the unit has connections for the Aerial and the USB cable. The box is nice and re-assuringly heavy compared to the first DVB box I bought.
The box the tuner came with had the unit, USB cable and the IR remote (with batteries). It also had the software CD and a user’s manual.

Remote
The remote is very impressive for this tuner. It’s a nice big, but not bulky unit. It is very much the same as the remote controls you see used with Windows Media Centre (and wouldn’t be surprised if that was the intention of this remote). The only complaint I have is that when combined with the software provided by Hauppauge, the remote does very little. All that you are able to do is change channels, the volume and pause and record the television channel. As I am aware there are plug-ins available for Girder (a third party software that is used for controlling a PC).

Software
This unit comes bundled with the WinTV2000 software along with the required drivers for the USB box. There is no difference in the software for a DVB freeview tuner and the Analogue tuner which I had before. I was rather disappointed at this, as digital freeview has many more capabilities compared to Analogue. Besides that, the initial setup is a simple process, and tuning into all the new channels couldn’t be easier. The quality of the picture using just a simple TV top antenna is stunning, far better than the reception I was getting with my Analogue box. The software allows you to turn your PC into a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) which was a definite requirement for me (not having a separate VCR or TV).
Just pressing the pause button on the remote stops the live feed and the computer begins recording, allowing you to pause live TV to be watched later (like SKY Plus). Pressing play again simply resumes the show, you are also able to skip through the ad breaks using the paused TV mode. You can also begin recording the current program using the Record button on the remote which records the current program to the Hard Disk. Recording takes up about 1.6GB per 1 hour of TV (so you’ll need a large hard drive if you intend on recording lots!). There is also a scheduling program included with the software that allows you to specify a time date and channel to be recorded. The one thing I didn’t seem to find was the ability to use an EPG (Electronic Program Guide).

Conclusion
To summarize this DVB tuner, the picture quality is perfect, the unit is small compact and very well built, the remote control is very impressive but there is little software to take advantage of this, and the software provided could do with some extra work. All in all I would highly recommend this product to any body considering buying this item. I am using it on a 1.7ghz Intel Pentium M (Centrino) with 1gb memory and 128mb Graphics card. There is no problem whatsoever running the TV tuner.
I have found that using third party software ShowShifter combined with this DVB tuner card, you are able to mock the Windows Media Centre system for a lot cheaper than buying the Microsoft software. This software gives you all the abilities mentioned above plus tons more including the ability to record programs using EPG, VERY Convenient!!! But that is another review topic all together.
 

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