ADS Technologies USBAV-705 Instant TV Deluxe USB Tuner

by ADS Tech

Product Details

Product Manual [716kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00065IHAO
• Item model number: USBAV-705
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,423 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

CONSUMER ALERT: This television receiver has only an analog broadcast tuner and will require a converter box after June 12, 2009, to receive over-the-air broadcasts with an antenna because of the Nation's transition to digital broadcasting. Analog-only TVs should continue to work as before with cable and satellite TV services, gaming consoles, VCRs, DVD players, and similar products. For more information, call the Federal Communications Commission at 1-888-225-5322 (TTY: 1-888-835-5322) or visit the Commission's digital television website at: www.dtv.gov Instant TV Deluxe is a great new TV Tuning device for people who want Digital Recording of their favorite shows. Tune in cable TV, record shows or camcorder footage from any PC or Video source. The NTSC 125 Channel Analog TV Tuner means no more opening your PC and installing a TV tuner card. Record on the fly to any CD or DVD discs, using MPEG-1, MPEG-2, VCD, SVCD, or DVD encoding. You can even pause live TV and pick up where you left off. Never miss your favorite shows again! Edit and update recordings with chapters and menus View your shows on the PC monitor in full-screen mode Connects to your PC through USB 2.0 port Includes remote control

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good hardware, really bad software/compatibility, April 12, 2005

By 

trev155 (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: ADS Technologies USBAV-705 Instant TV Deluxe USB Tuner (Personal Computers)

Overall, this unit may satisfy you if you only use it as an external portable (USB-2) video capture device.
Installation of the hardware is a snap. Most of the bundled software is inferior and really not designed very well.
CapWiz is almost unusable. Half usable is the SnapStream Beyond TV but its oversimplified design (SnapStream tried really hard to hide all advanced setup options and make the interface look like a set-top TiVo-like box) backfires and leaves one totally baffled as to why things don't work. For example, whatever I tried to enable the channel switch to stop at channel 35 (Food Network on Comcast basic cable in San Jose CA) nothing worked even though I explicitly selected to enable
all channels in the Beyond TVs setup wizard. Another thing that could not be fixed was quite frequent and intermittent
echo from the Live TV feature. The SnapStream's knowledge base on their website has a "solution" for this listed but none
of their workarounds fixed this problem for me. One of the "solutions" for SoundBlaster cards actually recommends
*downgrading* the audio drivers! One has to wonder about quality control in SnapStream when the software has such
problems with most popular audio cards on the market (Creative SoundBlaster cards) and with brand-name computers (I have HP Pavilion d1000y) Another problem is that no alternative software (Like SageTV or TitanTV) is supported on this hardware.

It is amazing how bad the Amazon's Product description is. Instead of providing some details like the fact that the
Beyond TV 3.5 SE version bundled with this product has only a 90-day trial version of the TV Program guide subscription
and after that you have to shell out another $5/month, $30/year or $70/unlimited to buy the extension of the service,
Amazon's description resorts to marketing hype like "Savor the possibilities. It almost boggles the imagination." Also
what does this phrase "Read all about it below!" refer to? There is nothing to be read "below"!

Three stars for quality hardware and zero stars for bundled software (2 stars average). The product goes back to Amazon.
I'm trying the Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150/Sage TV bundle next.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy TV, August 5, 2007

By 

Tomcat_AL200 "Tomcats Forever!" (Somewhere in S/E Michigan) - See all my reviews

Pros: Simple Installation and Set Up, Good Picture Quality, Beautiful Program Guide, and a remote.

Cons: Viewing program not full version, Interface and remote require 2 USB ports, guide program on 90 free trial.

After trying Happague, I needed a simpler interface and this was it, if you have the HDD room for programing and are willing to run the computer whenever you record, this is a perfect set up. I'll be using it in my dorm room so I don't have to bring a TV, so it will be perfect. I recomend it above all else in it's price range

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Substandard quality, May 13, 2006

By 

paperbackaddict - See all my reviews

This product is problematic at best. It will not install until several attempts (WDM Driver message) and after rebooting, the device is not recognozed until you unplug and reconnect it. ADS Technologies Technical support is not helpful and after convincing them to attempt repair, they said a replacement was being issued, but I received the exact same unit back. The software they provide is not reliable. They claim this is compatible with Orb, however Orb is now considering removing the product from its recommended equipment list as it does not work reliably. Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.