Avermedia's AverTV Stereo Desktop TV PVR (Personal Video Recorder) is a TV Tuner/Recorder add-in card that fits in a PCI slot in your PC. The card allows you to watch television on your monitor, save screen captures or entire television shows to your hard drive, or pause and resume shows while you are watching them. This card is comparable to the ATI TV Wonder, Pinnacle Systems PCTV or Hauppage WinTV cards, in that it does NOT replace your video display card, but works with your video display card by sending the TV image over the PCI bus of your computer to the display card. Some of the video cards the AverTV PVR works with include 3dfx cards, ATI Rage, Rage Pro, Rage 128 and, and the Nvidia TNT and Geforce cards. Notably, the Avermedia website says this card is NOT compatible with ATI's Radeon series of cards.

"In the box" is the Aver Desktop Stereo TV card, an audio loopback cable for routing the stereo audio signal from the TV card to an input on your sound card and then on to the speakers, one CD enclosed in a white envelope containing installation and application files, a very short quick start guide listing hardware and software installation instructions and diagrams.

I installed this card in a 750mhz athlon system with an ASUS K7M motherboard, a Soundblaster live sound card and a ATI Rage Fury Pro video card running Windows ME. I had previously tried installing an ATI Wonder VE TV card and a Pinnacle Systems PCTV Pro card. Both cards installed ok, but each card's TV reviwer software would lock up on this system a few seconds after starting. But, I gave TV cards one more chance, and surprisingly, this card has turned out to be incredibly stable on this system with no lockups either watching TV or recording.

The AverTV Stereo Desktop PVR was purchased for $30 after a $20 rebate. Street price for this card is typically $40-50. Anyone considering this card should note that Avermedia says it is not compatible with Trident, ATI Radeon, Cirrus Logic, and some SIS video cards.


Installation and Setup

The installation instructions are adequate, but limited, so its a good thing that this card is pretty easy to install. First the PCI card is installed in an open slot in your PC. Then run the audio loopback cable from the TV card sound output to the LINE IN on your sound card, and hook your coax TV signal cable into the coax connector on the back of the TV card. After the card is installed and video and audio connections are made, you'll turn on you computer, following the on screen instructions to install this TV card's drivers. Finally, you'll need to install the application/utility software, which includes the programs you use to watch TV and schedule recording of shows. This all went smoothly for me.

The first time you launch the AverTV application to watch or record programs, you'll need to let it scan for available channels, which will take a couple of minutes. After telling the software to search for cable or broadcast channels, the AverTV software will scan and memorize the available channels in your area. You'll also want to check the utilities that control your sound card to ensure that the the "line in" is enabled so that you get sound when watching and recording TV.

Viewing TV

The AverTV software offers features found in most software TV viewers. You can watch full screen on your monitor or in a small window, which can optionally be "always on top". The viewer window offers controls for channel selection and volume. Optionally visible, is a control panel, which offers access to setup parameters, access to a 16 channel preview mode, a button to "loop" back to the previous channel, a mute button, a button to set the view window to be "always on top", image capture controls, audio mode selection (mono, stereo, SAP enabled), video source (cable, s video or composite input), teletext (not available to me), and a TIVO-like feature AverMedia calls TimeShift. The software also allows you to "lock" channels out (adult channels, for example) from viewing at all times or selected times. Skins to give both the TV viewing window and control panel a handful of different looks are also included.

Using the feed from my local cable system, I found the picture quality in a small window on my screen to be very good. Full screen video contained a little more video noise than our standalone television. This software performs very well on my 750 mhz Athlon system, I can leave a small TV window open on my screen while web browsing, or working on documents or spreadsheets or balancing my checkbook with Quicken. Dragging the window around the screen usually has no impact on the video or audio quality or sync.

One of useful features offered by the viewing software is "Timeshift". Say someone rings your doorbell while you are watching a TV episode, pushing the Timeshift button causes the software to pause the display on your monitor and starts recording the episode to your hard drive. When you get back, push the play button, and the viewer picks up where you left off, playing the recording off your hard drive, while at the same time continuing to record so you can watch your show to its conclusion. The viewer control panel keeps a running tab of how far back you have time shifted your viewing. If you paused for 10 minutes to answer the door, you'll be 10 minutes behind the actual broadcast. At any time, you can catch up in 10 second increments by pushing a "forward skip" button, during commercials for example, or you can "skip" forward to what is currently being broadcast. A "full duplex" sound card (one that allows you to record audio while sending a different audio signal to your speakers) is required to take advantage of Timeshift. On my low end Athlon system, Timeshift taxes my system resources, and if I am editing a text document and viewing webpages while watching timeshifted video, it occasionally gets a little choppy. I'm actually surprised my rather old system can handle timeshifting video and a couple of other tasks, so most users shouldn't have any problems at all.

The 16 channel preview feature can also be useful, though its not any faster than stepping through channels manually. Selecting this mode puts 16 consecutive channels on your screen, and updates them one at a time, pausing a few seconds on each channel. Clicking on one window switches back to the viewer window with the channel you selected playing.

Recording

The AverTV software allows several recording options. The TV viewer control panel offers three modes, TV, Music cd, and VCR. "Music cd" is for playing music cd's. The VCR mode allows you to watch and record TV at the same time. In this mode, you can push a record button at any time, and record whats being displayed. Video is compressed to MPG1 or MPEGII format on the fly. These mpg video files can then be played back using the Avermedia software, windows media player, or any other video player you prefer. You have the following options for recording quality:

MPEG II Recording formats:
Best: 352X240 resolution, 3200 kbits/sec video bit rate, 27mb/min video file size
Good: 352X240 resolution, 2400 kbits/sec video bit rate, 20.6mb/min video file size
Long: 352X240 resolution, 1500 kbits/sec video bit rate, 13.6mb/min video file size

MPEG I
VCD: 352X240 resolution, 1152 kbits/sec video bit rate, ~10mb/min video file size

There is also a custom option to set bit rates and image size at other settings, as well as options to limit the duration of video recorded, or which drive you want to save the video to. The minimum system requirements for recording/encoding at the standard settings listed above is a 450mhz Pentium II. Avermedia recommends a 800mhz or faster system for recording at higher resolutions than those listed above.

I found VCD quality to be a little disappointing in full screen mode, a fair amount of noise was present and the video was not sharp, and not really suitable to watch in full screen mode (Looks ok in 1/4 screen mode or less). Even in Best mode, the video quality does not match the quality of a VHS recording, although its certainly good enough to watch in full screen mode on your monitor. My 750mhz athlon system had no problems encoding video on the fly, I don't see evidence of frames dropped, and audio/video sync is good.

AverTV also offers a mode called "Interactive Record", which works somewhat like the Timeshift feature. In "Interactive Record" mode you can watch a show while it is being recorded, or move backwards (or forwards again) in 10 or 20 second increments to watch what was recorded previously.

Avermedia also includes a separate application, called "Scheduler", which works pretty much like setting your VCR to record a show once, or on daily, weekly, or monthly schedule. The scheduler is easy to use, just input the start time, channel, record time length, and record quality. At the best quality, about 1.5 gb of diskspace is required to hold 1 hour's worth of video. As best I can tell, you cannot watch one show and record another.


Support

Avermedia offers FAQ's, driver downloads, and a email tech support form. The include PDF manual on the cd is complete and well done, the included hard copy documentation only covers installation, and is sparse. The online help files contain very little information, and you will need to go to the pdf manual to get answers to most questions.


Should you buy this TV Tuner card?

Yes. I find this TV tuner card to work very well, and is more stable than either the ATI or Pinnacle Systems cards I have tried previously. If this card is compatible with your system (you should be OK unless you have a Radeon card), you'll find this card to be an excellent, inexpensive route to adding a TV tuner with some great video capture features to your system.


Mfr Website:
http://www.aver.com/products/tvtuner_AVerTV_stereo.shtml

Another Option:
Pinnacle Systems PCTV Pro
http://www.epinions.com/content_51340349060


Recommended: Yes