Despite all the excitement around FreeView HD and the arrival of DVB-T2 tuners, there remains a huge number of DVB-T tuners available, and the AverTV H830 is a USB example of the breed. Despite the HD moniker, it is quite definitely a SD device as far as TV is concerned (in the UK at least.)
In the Box
Contained within the box is the surprisingly large USB stick itself (with no USB adaptor cable, meaning that it will cover up any USB ports alongside), a remote control, a FM aerial, a TV antenna and an adaptor cable for recording from other sources. Oh, and a sticker to put on your PC to proudly proclaim you’re using AverMedia for your TV. I reckon having that hulking great black USB stick projecting out of your PC will be a sufficient giveaway, if I’m honest.
Installing is straightforward. Upon plugging it into my netbook (the machine used in this review is a Samsung NC20 running Windows 7 with 2gb RAM and a pretty puny Via CPU) Windows 7 found, and downloaded drivers. This isn’t what the instructions said would happen, so I installed the drivers from the enclosed CD as well as the AverTV application. It all went pretty smoothly, with Windows downloading its own drivers again by the end of it.
Bundled Software
Running the AverTV application results in a red light appearing on the USB stick itself and the initial setup screen appearing. I attempted to scan for analog and digital TV using the antenna that came in the box without success. Admittedly, I do live in a valley and have an aerial so tall that NASA has to steer the Space Station around it, but even on my travels I’ve never managed to make these antennas work. Plugging in my home aerial resulted in the tuner picking up the full complement of analog and digital stations.
The bundled playing software works well – playback of TV is smooth and without stutter, although CPU of my netbook peaked at 100%. The CPU usage doesn’t change if running in full screen, timeshifting or recording. The software has a basic EPG (which doesn’t support all Freeview channels out of the box, although with some tweaking I managed to get most working.) This can be used for scheduling recording. A remote control is also provided and works well (but cannot be used outside of the bundled software.)
Media Center
Moving on to Windows 7 Media Center, some manual tweaking was again needed to make Media Center see the USB stick – Media Center only saw the analog tuner and needed to be manually pointed at the digital tuner. The subsequent channel scan then picked up the full complement of FreeView channels.
Watching TV in Media Center was smooth and stutter free on my netbook, although the CPU was again running at 100%. FreeView Text also worked, but performance was not good – selection of pages felt sluggish although the video continued to run smoothly.
Summary
In summary, this is a good single-tuner USB device. It is a little on the large side, and would have benefitted from a USB extension cable. The bundled software works well, although is a little light on features, and I’m not sure why one would use it if Media Center is available. It seems a little expensive for what it is – I would have hoped for dual tuners – but regardless of that, the tuner performance is rock-solid and functional even on a very low specification netbook.
The AverTV Hybrid Volar HD H830 is currently available from Amazon.co.uk for £59.99
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