ADS Technologies USBAV-705 Instant TV Deluxe USB Tuner Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)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.


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