PCMCIA Tv Tuner/Vid Capture/Fm/Remote Card for laptop

 

In todays times people want their computers to do everything, especially their laptops. People want eh same things on their laptops that they have own their desktops, but sometimes that just isn’t feasible or cost effective. People want entertainment, yes you can watch movies on laptops, but what about TV, and radio, what about being able to record TV and radio on your laptop? Yes some can do that, but only a limited few and at a premium price, in cost and added weight. The solution could be what I have for review today, it is a PCMCIA expansion card that let’s you watch TV, listen to FM radio, schedule record TV and radio and even comes with a remote and it costs very little. Read on to learn more…


 

PCMCIA Tv Tuner/Vid Capture/Fm/Remote Card for laptop

Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos

Sponsor: Tekgems

 

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

Add TV Tuner & FM Radio To Your Notebook!

This TV PCMCIA Cardbus is the perfect solution to add TV and FM radio capacity into your Notebook.

It also turns your notebook PC into a Personal Video Recorder (PVR): TV/Video Recording, Schedule Recording, Time shifting, etc

Listen and record your favorite TV programs and FM radio stations!!

Multiple video formats – AVI, MPEG 4, MPEG 2, MPEG 1 at video size up to 720 x 576 for recording TV and Video Clips.

Video source comes directly through 4 Audio/Video RCA jacks on the case.

Features :

FM Radio — watch and record

Full Screen TV display!

OSD: On Screen Display

Auto scan up to 125 TV channels

TV channel Fine tune +/-0.25MHz

Channel rename

Favorite channel list

Favorite TV channel editing

TV stereo

VBI supports Teletext

Remote control

Video up to 30fps

Full Screen display

Video Window free scale

Max. resolution up to 720×576

Time-shifting

Recording in MPEG 1/2/4 Format

Schedule Recording

Specifications :

Tuner:

Philips Silicon Tuner

Support PAL BG/DK/I/M/N,SECAM L/L; NTSC

Input 1.0V 75Ω

FM 88~108 MHz

Operating Temperature: ( -25℃ ~ 85℃ )

Hardware I/O:

TV input

S-VHS input

Composite input

Audio input (RCA L/R)

Software and Hardware capabilities

TV:

PAL / SECAM / NTSC

Stereo :

NICAM, A2

FM Radio

88 108 MHz

Video Size:

320×240

640×480

720×576

Full Screen

Free Scale

Aspect Ratio:

4:3

16:9

Capture Size:

320×240 ~ 720×480

Remote Control:

I/R Remote Control

Requirements :

Windows 2000/XP

Pentium III 900MHz or higher processor

64MB RAM or above

VGA Card with at least 8MB memory

Sound Card

Microsoft DirectX 9.0C

CD-ROM drive

Analog TV signal source (Cable or antenna)

Retail Package Content :

TV & FM & Video Capture PCMCIA Cardbus Card

Multi Video Input Cable

Remote control with battery

FM Antenna

User Manual

Software CD

PRICE: $51.50 from the TekGems site

A Better Look at Things

:

The packaging is bright an colorful, yes it a black background, but there is lots of information all over it. The front has all the features listed, and nice pictures of the actual product.

The back of the box has the specs and some informational pictures as well.

Opening the box we find it is packaged fairly well.

Unpacking we find that they really crammed a lot of stuff into that little box. Driver disc, video cables, antenna, remote control, user manual and the PCMCIA car itself.

The card itself looks like any other PCMCIA card with the exception of the special ports on the back end. MVI-which is for the audio and video inputs like s-video and standard RCA composite jacks. The FM connector uses a standard headphone style plug that is attached to a wire antenna. The TV jack is a basic COAX connector to be connected to any external antenna such as air or cable.

   

Lastly to look at is the remote. It’s small, about the size of a pack of cigarettes and about as thick as 5 credit cards stacked. The front of the remote is of course where we find all the function buttons. There is a numeric keypad for selecting channels or radio stations, a power button, mute, FM radio, stereo on and off, snapshot (or screenshot). There are buttons for volume, and channel There are also buttons to handle the playback of your recorded shows, stop, play, pause, next, previous, recall, time shift and there is a record button to start recording. There is also a separate button to be able to select the source, such as s-video, TV, or composite. The back of the remote is basically blank, the battery goes there.

   

Installation, Testing and Comparison

Installation is very easy, with you laptop turned off, insert the PCMCIA card into a free slot, power on and let Windows load. Once loaded you will see the ‘Found New Hardware’ screen, but you can ignore this and just pop the disc in the CD drive, it will install all the drivers and software for you. Of course once installation is complete you need to restart the computer…

An icon will appear on your desktop title Honestech TVR, also the scheduler and remote icons will be in your task bar/icon bar. The scheduler and remote are services that will start with your computer if you want them to, you’ll need to manually disable them as they auto start. Once you click the icon you are greeted with a quick splash screen and then the GUI appears. The GUI is the control center with all the functions of the remote and more. The GUI bar is laid out nicely and things are easy to find. All the basics are here on the bar, select the source, channels, and other options.

   

If you click the configuration button you are greeted with lots of options, the first tab allows you to select TV Settings, such as regions, TV or CATV, and you can customize which channels you want to receive.

The next tab is for video settings, here you adjust the Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturation of the picture if need be, also you can choice different Audio and video input sources.

And the next tab is for Record Settings, here you can select what type of file, and what quality you want things to be recorded as, and where you want the recording to go.

The last tab is the ETC dialog, here are misc options you can adjust if need be, like the time between automatically surfing channel, and how many windows you want the channels to be displayed in.

The last thing I want to cover before going into using the actual unit is the scheduler, it’s a basic interface that allow you to select the Day, Start Time, Durations, Source, Channel, When to record, Recording Mode and What to do after recording. It is essentially a mini DVR for your laptop, with full functionality.

You can also use the input connections to possibly hook up and record from a VCR or video camera and you can hook up a standard DVD player as well to watch DVD that way.

For whatever reason screen capture cannot capture the active video within the video box so I cannot show you shots of the software in action with a TV reception, but it was using just signals from the air, what channels I could get around here came in fairly clear, the FM antenna also acts as an antenna for the TV, so of course some adjustments need to be made. Hooking cable up to it of course gives you a prefect picture, but then you are wired now, so it depends what you want.

The FM reception is ok, but then again where I am located it is hard to get much good reception with any station except those with the highest watts being pushed out.

The whole thing is very easy to use, and if you have a laptop that didn’t come with TV tuner functionality then this is a nice, cheap option for you.

The remote is a bit lacking, the range is rather short only about 5 feet, but I used the battery that came with it, so it could be an old battery. It uses the watch type batteries, and I didn’t have any spares lying around to swap it out, so the range could change with a fresh battery.

Summary:

Overall I couldn’t find anything really bad about this product, it all depends where you are located as to what reception you will receive. The features are nice, and the whole setup is very easy to use, the ability to use it as a DVR is rather cool, and with the remote you have basically a nice portable HTPC system.

DragonSteelMods gives the PCMCIA Tv Tuner/Vid Capture/Fm/Remote Card for laptop a 5 out of 5 score.

Pros:

-Ease of use

-Good price to features/function ratio

-Lots of features and functionality

-Remote control

Cons:

-None really

I would like to thank TekGems for the chance to review their products.