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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Great idea - but lots of problems!, April 25, 2004
I bought the NextVision 6 primarily so that I could watch TV on my brand new 22" IBM C220p monitor (which is way OUTSTANDING, lemme tell ya!). I toyed with the idea of getting a video card, but balked at dealing with potential software and picture quality issues. The NextVision 6 is a stand-alone unit, so it looked like a great alternative to simply buying a small TV (it is right about in the same price range as a 13" Sony).The setup is relatively simple, however, the end result is very unpleasant. There is a special cable provided, which is designed to interface with your graphics card output and feed into the unit's RGB input. You then connect your normal VGA cable out of the unit's RGB output and into your monitor, thus establishing a pass-through. However, the resulting output signal is highly degraded and of such poor quality by virtue of this cable/pass-through combination that your computer graphics suddenly look like doo-doo. Forget the TV part, because you've just hosed your computer graphics! Now, in my case, my IBM C220p monitor has dual inputs. So, I said, "Forget it!" to this whole pass-through business and I simply connected the unit's output to my IBM C220p monitor's second input. Unfortunately, the aforementioned special cable provided is not useable for this purpose. Just as well, since it's a piece of junk. So, I had to drop another $30 on a decent VGA cable to make this connection. The resulting TV signal was very acceptable (with the TV signal source being standard cable via coax), however I dunno if I would call it `high definition'. You cannot sit too close to the screen without seeing some sort of `digital smear'. Since my monitor is a 22", I can kick back on the bed and watch TV but this may be more of a problem with a smaller monitor or if you had plans on watching the TV from directly in front of your computer. Anyway, I run my monitor at 1600x1200 resolution. The NextVision 6 touts 1280x1024 resolution. I tried different combinations of monitor/ NextVision 6 resolutions and found that if I kept my monitor at 1600x1200 and ran the NextVision 6 at 1024x768 I got the best picture. Why? Who knows. But you do have to play around with both the monitor/ NextVision 6 resolutions and the NextVision 6 brightness/contrast settings to really find the optimal settings. Patience is required! The remote control, from which most of the functions are accessed, is, as others have noted, a pain in the rear. Some of the buttons respond to a lighter touch than others. To scan up/down through the channels you had better be able to squeeze this punk with all your might to get it to actuate! I have to hold it between my thumb on the bottom and middle finger on the top/button to apply sufficient pressure. I may opt to get a digital cable box in order to use it as the tuner/remote, which will leave the NextVision 6 to function simply as the means to convert the cable signal to a computer-compatible signal. Another expense - ugh. A lot of caveats here, folks. Certainly, if I did not have a dual-input monitor, the NextVision 6 would have been returned as totally unacceptable. However, since I was able to get it up and running to a truly acceptable level via the procedure outlined above, I am well-pleased with the TV signal. Of course, I cannot watch TV while working on my computer since I have the unit's input on a completely separate monitor input from my computer, but no biggie. I just A/B between them with the monitor selector switch on my IBM. In the final analysis, I was able to accomplish what I started out to achieve, which was to watch TV on my IBM C220p monitor. Yeah! Oh, one more problem: When I am not using the unit I have to unplug the audio cable (which runs from my sound card's audio-out to the unit's audio-in) because it generates a hum in my speakers. No doubt the shielding on this cable is poor - I may replace it with a higher-quality cable. More $! As far as hooking up an external DVD player, I haven't tried it. I use Power DVD 5 on my computer, which is outstanding, so no need to use the NextVision 6 for that. If I want to play console games (X-Box, Game Cube), I'll stick with my 35" Sony TV. Maybe I'll hook up a VCR, which should work fine. All in all, unless you have a dual-input monitor, plenty of patience and want to spring for a second decent VGA cable, forget this unit. Otherwise, as I said, I have achieved a very decent TV viewing experience on my monitor.
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