Sabrent USB 2.0 TV Tuner/Video Capture Box with Remote Control - TV-USB20
by SABRENT
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Our Price: $47.97 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Sabrent USB 2.0 TV Tuner/Video Capture Box with Remote Control - TV-USB20
Customer Review: Awesome Capabilities and Quality
Summary: 5 Stars
First I would like to say that when I bought this device, initially I thought that I would be able to just get TV from the air. I was wrong, it is intended to get either input from an antenna or from a cable into the TV jack. There are also a S-Video input and a composite video input jack. The remote is awesome, although in XP you need to be in the WinDVR program on the top for it to respond. Also the recording of the TV is quite good, except there is a green screen covering what is being recorded. I'm still trying to see if its a setting that I turn off, but right now I can't record and watch at the same time. The quality of the video is surprisingly excellent. I'm going off to college and I have a cable jack in my dorm and this a great solution instead of getting another TV, especially since I have a second larger monitor in addition to my laptop. This is a excellent investment. With the composite and S-Video inputs, you can easily feed in video from a Video camera or VCR and record digital video to your computer, and then later burn that to a DVD. Make sure, that you get either the TV cable or a TV antenna for this device.Customer Review: an inexpensive experiment
Summary: 3 Stars
running vista home premium on my laptop and it initially caused blue-screen problems. shut the auto-driver assignment on vista off, bring down the drivers from sabrent's website and ignore the winDVR software that came with it and it will work well enough from a video capture perspective. i haven't dealt with the remote or tuner at all and the installation was a lot more painful because it took a good 6+ hours of messing with vista and interwin before it was discovered that sabrent was the manufacturer (wasn't listed on the box or any included items). i was actually willing to call it a failed experiment at the cost of less than $30 but my brother was able to find out the manufacturer and once we brought down the vista drivers & software, it worked well enough. (i do have issues where i need to reboot if i run the software and do some video work, close it and try to relaunch the application. the video doesn't always stream to my PC). like i said, for as little as it costs, its not bad if you can get it to run. just try to start with sabrent as your step one.Customer Review: Don't waste your money like I did
Summary: 1 Stars
Sabrent clearly lies when they show the Vista compatibility tag on the cover of the box. This item is NOT compatible with windows Vista at all. It comes with software that is for windows 2000 or windows xp. Windows doesn't even have a version of windvr 3 available for upgrade to windows vista. I find it comical that Windows has a program out that is incompatible with it's own operating system, but that's how Microsoft repays customer loyalty... Additionally, I tried to install the software anyway to see if it would work, but when I got to the registration page, (Yes, you need a software key to activate the software), there was no software key provided in the box at all. I tried using the serial number that was on the tuner and on the box, but the software didn't accept that. SO even if I could get the software to work on my operating system, I can't install it, because the company (Sabrent) didn't provide the software license key. Stay away from this product and indeed, this company.Customer Review: Good Value...
Summary: 4 Stars
Overall, am happy with it. It does what it's supposed to and the price was great. I'm new to video capturing, and there's such a wide range of pricing for these type of devices, it's hard to tell exactly what the difference is between this and one costing 3-4 times more. One thing that seems to be important, is having a capture device that will do the "legwork" (video processing) - something a direct USB wire setup cannot do. With an outside box like this, it doesn't commandeer your computer.
I've been archiving old videos, and it's been a learning experience. After a LOT of testing with all video software out there, the one that works best is the one that's included free with it - WinDVR.
Tip - running the sound through this box instead of directly into my sound card (as recommended everywhere), solved all sound syncing problems. Maybe one day, I'll try a more expensive device, though not sure exactly what it will do better - the picture is very good using S-video.
Customer Review: Almost works on Windows 7
Summary: 3 Stars
Plugging in this device on Windows 7 automatically installs a driver called TV Walker QQ. Although the software complains about compatibility problems, InterVideo WinDVR runs fine on W7. The problem I had is I was not able to get the tuner to tune any channels off my cable connection (and I have another tuner that does). Nothing but static. I was able to get the SVIDEO connection to capture the video, but I then had to pipe audio directly into the PC. Luckily the streaming software I'm using (BroadCam Video) doesn't have a problem with this, though the latest version of VLC does.
BTW: Sabrent does have Windows 7 driver for the device on their website, but it won't install on Windows 7. I emailed their support, but I'll be very suprised to see a fix. Looking at the driver INF file, it came straight from the Chip manufacture (Trident) and wasn't touched. If someone finds an up-to-date driver, please drop me a note at mike-at-mpsharp-dot-com.