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Pvr USB 2.0 Tv Tuner Box Ntsc Mpeg 1/2/4 Edit & Burn To DVD
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Pvr USB 2.0 Tv Tuner Box Ntsc Mpeg 1/2/4 Edit & Burn To DVD Customer Reviews
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First the good news
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I'm pleased with the video output of this device. From standard cable TV input, it gives a MUCH better picture than my mid-priced 13 inch TV that is next to the computer.
Mechanically / electronically, it is pretty decent for the price. The only quibble I have in that respect is that you have to run a seperate audio line to your sound card, rather than everything going through USB (maybe this improves data flow, but it is a minor irritation for me.)
The software and drivers is where this really disappoints. Installed on two different systems, it gave lots of trouble on both:
On the laptop (Sony Vaio GRV550 2.4Ghz, 512 RAM, XP Home SP1) the drivers gave me "Blue Screen Of Death" on an otherwise absolutely stable system several times before I finally managed to get it to work. Once installed and sort of debugged, video worked fine, but audio would cut out completely after 10 to 30 seconds, no matter how you had it set. I had to to close the program and reopen to get another few seconds of sound. (I solved this problem by buying an external Soundblaster USB sound processor, which the KWORLD tuner liked a lot more than my internal Yamaha soundcard.)
I still get a "cannot create shell notification" error when Windows first starts (I think this is probably from the PVR Plus application) but after clicking "OK" everything seems to work as it should.
The newest driver downloaded from the manufacturer's site was even more buggy on the laptop than the one that came with the device. I must have gotten 7 "BSODs" before I gave up and went back to the older drivers.
On the desktop (Homebuilt, AMD 3200 running @ 2.1 Ghz on a Chaintech 7NIL1 MOBO, 1 Gig RAM, XP home SP2, completely fresh OS and program install with all the latest direct-X, encoder and Media Player 10 downloads and patches) the newer driver installed OK, and the problem with the sound cutting out from the laptop install was not encountered.
On BOTH systems, recording through the included interface (TVR) in either MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 brought several different DLL related errors when you tried to stop recording. (Have to hit Ctl-Alt-Del several times to end the program to get out. (However, that doesn't mess up your recording, so I suppose one could live with it.) MPEG-4 (with Divx codec) and AVI recording work without those DLL errors upon closing, (although AVI gives you HUGE files) I didn't try recording at the DVD, VCD or SVCD settings, so can't say if they work or not.
On BOTH systems, using the included recording interface, there was a distinct audio lag on anything recorded in any of the MPEG formats(1,2 or 4) , and the longer the recording, the farther the audio got behind, Record a 90 minute movie, and by the end, the audio track would be three minutes behind.
However, I lucked out and discovered that the free Windows Movie Maker works perfectly with the KWORLD USB2.0 Video Capture on both of my computers. No audio lag, no crashes when you stop recording, and the .wmv format gives you sharper video and much smaller file sizes than Mpeg 1 or 2. If you need MPEG format, record them through Windows Movie Maker and convert them through Win-Avi or one of the other converters. I've even recorded some broadcast TV to WMV, converted to MPEG1, and run that through Kinoma Producer to play it on a Palm.
The DVD / VCD recording program in the NERO Suite also works well with the KWORLD tuner if you have a lot of empty hard drive space to fill.
Several other people on another site have given the software and drivers a high rating, and video quality a lower rating, so my experiences in installing on two different systems with similar results and difficulties may be the exception.
(Hint: disable Spybot S&D before attempting to install, if you have it on your system. It won't make it easy, but it will help a lot). |
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