AverTV Volar Black HD
Sit back, put your feet up and relax while PCW takes a look at anything and everything to do with TV on your PC.
Scott Bartley | Tuesday, December 01 2009USB TV tuner
A few months back we looked briefly at a handful of USB TV tuners that let users watch broadcast TV on their PC. This time round we’re going to take a closer look at just one of these devices, the AverTV Volar Black HD, and tell you a little more about what it does and how well it does it.
First off, if you’re new to TV on your PC, plugging in a USB stick tuner such as the AverTV Volar can turn your humble PC into a television in a matter of minutes. Simply plug the stick into a vacant USB port, plug the other end into your UHF TV aerial, install the software that comes with the tuner and you’re all set to watch (and record) TV on your PC.
A word of warning, this tuner will only receive the Freeview HD digital terrestrial signal. This is the service broadcast from land-based transmission towers, not the satellite service, so the coverage area isn’t as broad as satellite service and you’ll need to make sure you’re in a Freeview HD covered area before you buy the tuner. The Freeview website (freeviewnz.tv) has coverage maps showing where you can receive Freeview HD.
In the AverTV box we find the USB stick itself, a tiny UHF antenna and a short (around 10cm long) USB extension cable, which is more of a safety feature than anything else since it’ll stop you accidentally snapping the thing off if you’re using it with a notebook. There’s also a CD containing the TV viewing software and a very basic manual that steps you through the installation process.
The manual recommends users plug in the USB stick, cancel the automated Windows driver installation wizard that pops up, then install the drivers and application from the CD.
Once this was done were able to watch crystal clear Freeview HD broadcast on our notebook. The signal strength in central Auckland was strong enough that we only needed the little antenna that came with the AverTV but most users will need to plug in a roof-mounted UHF aerial for best results.
The software interface is pretty decent and on our system channel switching was fairly swift (sometimes PC-based TVs tend to be horribly slow to change channels), too. Recording and time-shifting worked flawlessly and the application will even record in an iPod- or Sony PSP-friendly H.264 MPEG4 video format.
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