Diamond XtremeTV PVR660 USB TV Tuner with Remote Control ( PVR660RCUSB )

by Diamond

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000FHGUWA
• Item model number: PVR660RCUSB
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #82,430 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 24, 2006

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

What if you were able to watch your favorite TV programs, sporting events, or news programs live from anywhere in the world? Stuck in a hotel room in Helsinki on a business trip and want to watch your alma mater’s rivalry football game? On vacation in Hawaii and want to catch up on what’s going on at home with your local news? Working late at the office and you don’t want to miss out on the season premiere of Lost? You can do all of this and more with Diamond’s Xtreme TV PVR660USB and any internet-connected laptop or PC.

You’re In Control
With the included remote control you can access the television content from your cable box, satellite receiver, DVR, and your DVD files, MP3’s, pictures and more from your PC via the Internet, whether you are at home or miles away. Anywhere there is an Internet connection you can get full control over your content, from changing channels and viewing content stored on your DVR, to rewinding or fast-forwarding or setting up a season pass for your favorite shows. You can watch and control your television any time, any where, any place. On top of all that it also comes with a built-in FM Radio Tuner.

With the Best Video Recorder Available
Xtreme TV PVR 660 features ArcSoft Total Media, the best personal video recorder interface in the industry. With features for storing, organizing, playing, and burning your Live TV, recorded programs, MP3’s and CD’s. Xtreme TV PVR 660’s on-board hardware encoder ensures you and your family will always experience the most "Xtreme" visual quality and performance available. Also, with the authoring features of ArcSoft you can burn your content to a DVD for your personal viewing.

The Orb is the Thing That Makes it All Work
In addition to the hardware and included ArcSoft Total Media video recorder, Xtreme TV incorporates its TV and Video Recording feature with remote viewing capabilities powered by Orb software. It allows you to access live TV or recorded TV from any broadband-enabled device including notebooks, desktops, mobile phones, and Windows PDAs. Orb also gives you secure access to your digital media from your home computer through a simple web interface which includes a free program guide.

None of those Pesky Hidden Charges
When you buy the Xtreme TV PVR660 you don’t need to pay any additional monthly, annual or per view fees beyond what you’re paying your current service providers to watch all of your content. So watch as much TV as you want whenever you want and wherever you want. It won’t cost you a penny more than what you’re paying now.

What Does it Work With and What’s In the Box?
The Xtreme TV PVR660 has a USB 2.0 Interface, Coaxial Cable, Composite Video, S-Video, and RCA L/R audio inputs. It is auto compatible with NTSC,PAL, and SECAM TV Systems. System requirements include a 900mhz processor, a Direct X 9.0 compatible video card, Windows Media Player 9 or later, Windows 2000 or later, and a television source. Ships with Mini Firefly RF Remote Control, ArcSoft Total Media, Muvee software, quick start guide, installation cd, RCA audio and video cables, and S-Video Cable.

Product Description

Diamond XtremeTV PVR660 USB TV Tuner with Remote Control

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Darn nice USB Tuner/PVR, November 9, 2006

By 

Fuzzle (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diamond XtremeTV PVR660 USB TV Tuner with Remote Control ( PVR660RCUSB ) (Personal Computers)

I've been using this for about a month and am quite happy with it. I don't have a 'real' TV, however I subscrib to Comcast in order to have Broadband. I'm not a regular TV watcher either (kinda hard to be without a TV :->) and was looking for an inexpensive solution which didn't take up much room. Adding a USB tuner to my laptop was an attractive thought.

If you aren't expecting high definition video and just want to watch TV on your PC, this works just fine. I have it hooked up without a cable box, so I can't get any of the scrambled channels, but it does the other 99 channels. I can view it full screen, about 2/3 screen (which shows the menu selections on the left) or as a small picture in the lower left of the screen (not picture-in-picture, though). When you first install the software it goes out and figures out which channels are available. At first I thought it wasn't finding any channels, but several hours later all the channels were there. Very strange. It's been fine ever since and that was the only glitch I experienced.

The PVR (recorder) is handy. I can set it to record based on time/date/channel. Watch out for the file sizes, though! It makes MPG files which are about 3GB for each hour of video. At least it calculates how much space it needs to record what you want, so it will tell you if you are going to fill up your hard drive.

My only complaint so far is the software didn't allow me to choose where the MPG files are recorded. I would really like to put them on my external HD instead of in the default location. Maybe if I reinstalled the SW I could change it. (Haven't tried, though.) For now, I just move files off to the external HD as needed. In a whole month I think I've recorded 4 or 5 shows. Not much, but I've been able to watch stuff that I otherwise might have missed or forgotten to watch.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Hardware; Flawed and Unsupported Bundled Software, September 29, 2006

By 

Aaron Vinck (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Diamond XtremeTV PVR660 USB TV Tuner with Remote Control ( PVR660RCUSB ) (Personal Computers)

Sept 2006: I have only owned this product for a week. The hardware seems to work fine. The bundled Arcsoft TotalMedia 2 software (that manages the recording and playback) SEEMS like good software as well - except for one big problem. On my system, it thinks it's a day later than it actually is (for instance, on Wednesday, it thinks it's Thursday). My PC's date/time is set correctly -- yet the software thinks it's the next day. This ruins all my scheduled recordings. And sadly, Arcsoft offers ZERO supprt on its website for this software, because it's "bundled software" -- they apparently only support software purchased directly from them or boxed retail versions. So, I'm up a creek without a paddle. My saving grace is that I'm on a Windows XP Media Center Edition OS, which has its own recording and playback sofware, so I do not have to rely on the faulty Arcsoft software.

So, if you're not relying on this unsupported software that may or may not work properly (because you have Media Center Edition), this package is otherwise a good product. Had the sotware worked, I would have given it 5 stars.

March 2007 Update: I have been using this tuner for six months now, using Windows Media Center as the DVR recording software. It really has worked great. I record an average of about 5 scheduled TV programs daily, so it's seen a LOT of use. The only problem I've encountered is that once in a while, the hardware (or software, I've not figured ot which) records the scheduled progam, but all I get is the audio, but no video.

I am using this product with a HP Pavilion dv2000t laptop, running Windows Media Center OS.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars So far I'm pretty impressed., April 18, 2007

By 

C. Hedick "porkboy" (NYC, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Diamond XtremeTV PVR660 USB TV Tuner with Remote Control ( PVR660RCUSB ) (Personal Computers)

Here's my setup:

Toshiba Satellite Notebook. 512MB Ram, 80 gig HD, basic boring PC. TV is basic cable.

I bought this to digitize my VHS tapes and "time shift" my TV watching without having to pay the cable company for service and to rent a set top box / DVR. Actually, I don't even pay for cable TV (just internet) but just use their co-ax hook up to get the dozen or so free broadcast channels they must provide by law for free (in New York City at least).

HARDWARE

Nice, tight and attractive little piece of hardware. The fact that it is powered by the USB port is great as I am very short of power outlets in my apartment. I hate power bricks! The fact that it comes with every single cable you will ever need is also fantastic. One bizarre thing: the LED indicator lights up green when the device is not ready and red when the device is ready. Isn't green = go and red = stop an international standard in every country in the world?

The packaged remote has about 30 buttons on it. Nice, slim design but it takes a while to find what you need.

SOFTWARE

ArcSoft TotalMedia is super simple to use and has a wonderful basic interface. If you're a settings tweaker you might be disappointed. Average Joes will be very pleased. Everything worked for me without a hitch. It does load slowly. If you click "back" or "home" or any navigation for that matter there's a 3 second delay.

EXPERIENCES

Capturing video from the VHS tapes was super easy. The quality was slightly worse than the tapes themselves but over all pretty good. The file sizes are freaking huge. 15 minutes of video at best quality setting made a 600MB file. I tried using the burn to DVD feature and had one disappointment. It said I could burn 11 files to the disc and still have 2% free space left. When it was done burning it only burned 9 files. I've had similar problems with other CD DVD burners, just add 15% "empty" space to each DVD-R disc you burn.

Other reviews complain that you have to pay for Titan TV electronic programming guide (EPG). Not anymore. There were no "trial version" warnings that I came across. The EPG worked well too. I made one scheduled recording for 15 minutes. Another huge file (1.5 gig) resulted but quality was very good.

HAVEN'T TRIED IT YET

ArcSoft Total Media comes with picture and music organization modules. I don't need these. I wish I could turn them off. At least TotalMedia didn't hijack my application preferences for opening .mp3 and .jpg files. Lord, I hate that.

FM recording. I get crappy radio reception and I podcast most of my favorite radio shows anyway. Will never use this, but I could see others using it.

The unit also comes with "slingbox"-like features that allow you to access your laptop / cable connection from other computers on the internet. Pretty cool, but I haven't used it as I don't think I can get away with watching "The Office" at the office. But, I could see this being a good friend when I go away for the weekend away from NYC and want to watch the Jets game.

SUMMARY

I was expecting hassles. I was 40% sure I would be returning it. I was pleasantly suprised by both hardware and software even tho both have some shortcomings. Set up time was about 2 hours including messing around with the spaghetti dish of cables I have in my entertainment cabinet which was really most of the set up time. Interface is super duper intuitive. Kudos to ArcSoft. If the "slingbox"-like features work, I'm really impressed.