I took a chance on buying this TV tuner even after seeing its two-and-a-half star rating. Many of the negative reviews that I read seem to be either a result of poor signal strength or a low-performance PC. Some people got defective units which can happen to anyone with anything. The rest just say it's junk, but don't give any explanation. I'm watching TV with this tuner as I'm writing my review and it's working great for me.
In my case, setup was a breeze. I just placed the simple included antenna in a window near our PC. (The included USB extension cable was helpful with antenna placement.) Then I plugged the antenna into the TV tuner. Next, I plugged the USB extension cable into the TV tuner, then the computer. Windows 7 tried to find drivers through Windows Update, but failed as the Quick Start Guide said it would. I inserted the CD with the TotalMedia software and device drivers and had the software and drivers installed in a few minutes. After a restart, I fired up the TotalMedia software which easily detected the TV tuner. Setup took about 15 minutes with most of that time for channel scanning. The dinky included antenna allowed me to pull in 24 digital channels.
The included TotalMedia software does about what you'd want it to. It takes a few seconds to initialize after you click on it, but it runs flawless once it's open. It has an EPG from which you can easily schedule a program to be recorded. You can edit the names of channels and their order in the list. You can make and save lists of channels you like. There could be a few things placed a little more efficiently, but all the features I need are included in this program.
The recording function works great, whether from a scheduled recording or just clicking the record button while watching TV. There are three ways you can start recording: Click the record button while watching TV, or click on a program in the EPG and select Record, or go to Schedule and manually select a channel and record start and stop times. You can choose a folder to record to in the settings menu. You can also choose a recording quality from several options that change the bitrate. There is a noticeable difference between the highest and lowest quality settings, but the lowest one is still useful. The resulting files are quite large, and can't be edited efficiently in Sony Vegas without converting them to another format first. Vegas can do this provided you don't try to preview or edit the raw MPEG-TS file created by the tuner. Just import it and render it into another format. (.WMV works for me.)
Overall, I highly recommend this TV tuner. It works like a charm with the included software and records high quality video. (If this changes, I'll amend my review.) The included antenna works as good or better than an RCA flat bat-shaped antenna. I should mention that I received the KW-UB435Q V2 tuner. The system I'm using it on has Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 1, a 2.90gHz quad-core CPU, 8 GB of dual-channel RAM, and ATI Radeon HD 4250 onboard graphics (512 MB shared memory). I always record on a separate hard drive from the OS. While watching TV, the CPU usage hovers around 30%, and goes only slightly higher while recording. Any computer that can smoothly play 1920x1080p video will probably work fine with this tuner.
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Reviews with images
Works great for my application (Laptop)
I was in the market for a USB tuner that I could use with my laptop for football tailgating so I could watch games broadcast over the air. After reading some of the reviews for this tuner I was a little hesitant to buy, but it was inexpensive and several people stated their positive reports with the product, so I placed the order along with a separate indoor/outdoor antenna (August DTA240). Installation was straight forward and only took a few minutes. Once the drivers and software were installed I searched for stations, finding 36 of them (I'm in Memphis). I will say that using the navigation buttons to channel up/down are terrible as it takes way too long, so stick to changing channels in the channel guide. The picture quality is very good as long as the signal is acceptable, which is visible by the signal strength indicator. I haven't used the DVR setting yet so I can't report on that aspect of the product.The tuner/antenna setup cost me less than $40, and it does exactly what I need, which is why I gave it a 5 star review. The software isn't the greatest but it's definitely not as bad as some of the previous reviews have stated.
