AverTV HD Green Eco-friendly TV Tuner USB A835

Gyck

Hi,

I've been poking around the forums looking for information on USB Saorview tuners. I came across the AverTV HD A835 on Amazon and Ebay. Does anyone have experience with this tuner?
And if anyone has any idea why it's marketed as 'eco-friendly' please let me know why

Thanks...

Delta Lima

Yes,

I got one of these sticks a while back and tried it on an Acer Revo I have beside my TV. The picture was unwatchable even though I was using an outdoor aerial. Possibly my Revo wasn't up to it the required spec.

As for it being 'eco friendly' ? Well it comes in a nice green box and is suppose to have low power consumption. If I throw the lot in the fire, I might get some value out of it, on a cold night.

Gyck

Delta Lima wrote: »

Yes,
As for it being 'eco friendly' ? Well it comes in a nice green box and is suppose to have low power consumption. If I throw the lot in the fire, I might get some value out of it, on a cold night.

OK, that doesn't sound promising. I was hoping to use it in a Zotac 9300 ITX with a Pentium e5300 - a wee bit more powerful then your setup but I'd rather not take chances.
Did you manage to get anything working with the Revo?

Johnboy1951

Gyck wrote: »

Hi,

I've been poking around the forums looking for information on USB Saorview tuners. I came across the AverTV HD A835 on Amazon and Ebay. Does anyone have experience with this tuner?
And if anyone has any idea why it's marketed as 'eco-friendly' please let me know why

Thanks...

Does it have to be that model?

I use a

ID 15a4:9016 Afatech Technologies, Inc. AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick

which has worked well for a long time, and a mate in Aus is also using the same model.

There are lots of those USB dongle receivers on the market .... available for €10 to €15 each.

There are a number of threads in 'Bargain Alerts' about them.

woidoi

Gyck wrote: »

Hi,

I've been poking around the forums looking for information on USB Saorview tuners. I came across the AverTV HD A835 on Amazon and Ebay. Does anyone have experience with this tuner?
And if anyone has any idea why it's marketed as 'eco-friendly' please let me know why

Thanks...

Don't know why it's marketed as eco-friendly but they have had various editions of that A835 tuner over the past year or two. I have a world cup branded version.

This tuner will work perfectly with Saorview but like a lot of these tuners you need a setup that can handle the throughput of HD material. For instance I have an old at this stage Advent netbook running Windows XP that can handle the standard definition channels no problem but will stutter severely on RTE2 HD. There is a hardware upgrade to the graphics for this netbook that will enable HD throughput but I'll lose wireless capability (a physical space issue I believe).

My Acer laptop running Windows 7 from last year with a much higher spec will stutter on HD as well. However setup on Win 7 was effortless, it recognised the dongle and scanned the channels without me realising it. I jumped when Peppa Pig suddenly appeared on screen. :eek:

My PC running Windows XP with a GeForce GTX 560 830MHz 1GB PCI-Express HDMI can handle it all easily without hitting the CPU at all. I have another PC with a lower spec graphics card that struggles.

These plug in usb tuners DO work but the computer needs to be able to do all the heavy lifting, it's only a dongle after all!

Depending on the software/hardware/OS you use you will get different mileage. Some combinations allow the graphics card to do all the work while others will max out your PC's CPU handling the HD. Check it all out first before committing money would be my advice but you can be lucky and it will all work without a hitch first time too!:)

Live long and perspire!

Gyck

Thanks for the replies.
I'm not wedded to a particular model but the AverTV model seemed to support HD and I was interested in hearing about the performance of that particular tuner. I've seen plenty of tuners advertised but not all seem to support Saorview HD. Like I said I'm looking to run it on a not so new platform so info on specs that work is very useful.
However I've also got a Zbox AD02 and would be very interested to know how something like that would perform (E350/Radeon 6310)...

Gerry Wicklow

Most dongles are essentially only tuners. As mentioned above, it is the PC itself that does the donkey work decoding and displaying the pictures. The only time HD v SD becomes an issue with a dongle is if you are after UK HD as it then needs to tune in DVB-T2.

Gyck

Gerry Wicklow wrote: »

The only time HD v SD becomes an issue with a dongle is if you are after UK HD as it then needs to tune in DVB-T2.

I’m not going for UK HD, so presumably I don’t want a DVB-T2 tuner? I’m hoping to hit the Three Rock Transmitter for RTE HD transmissions.

zg3409

Gyck wrote: »

I’m not going for UK HD, so presumably I don’t want a DVB-T2 tuner? I’m hoping to hit the Three Rock Transmitter for RTE HD transmissions.

Yes

Johnboy1951

I would be wary of paying 'over the odds' just because the advertising claims HD & 'Eco'.

The dongles are just tuners ..... they do not process the received signal, so it does not matter to the dongle what is received.

Some of the earlier models most likely came with Windows software that would only process SD channels.
That was solely the fault with the 'free' software.

At this time I would be more concerned with the physical device if purchasing new than with the software.

Things that can impact use .....

if the aerial connection is on the side of the device it can interfere with an adjacent USB port.

if the aerial socket on the device is of the 'mini' type, then an adapter will be required to allow a standard sized aerial cable to be plugged in. Some devices have such an adapter others not. The flying lead also takes the weight/strain off the USB port if a standard aerial cable is used.

the width of some devices can make adjacent sockets unusable ..... I use a 'flying' USB lead to avoid such problems.

if you intend to use the device on an OS other than Windows, then you should ensure the tuner is supported. Most are on Linux, but it is worth checking first. There appears to be only a few devices that are supported on MAC

lastly ..... if in the future you might wish to record one channel and watch another on Mux 2 when it launches, you will need two tuners. (Presently there is only one so one tuner is sufficient) There are twin tuner models available ... or alternatively two cheap single tuner models might be the way to go .... more versatile but take up two sockets and requires two separate aerial feeds.

Overall for about €10 to €15 each they are a very cheap way to get Saorview on the PC, and they work well ... providing of course that the PC has enough grunt to decode the HD signal in real time.

Great fun!

Gyck

Thanks for the advice Johnboy. I’ll be using the tuner with Win 7, though linux compatibility would be a nice bonus, and I’m not interested in the software. I’ve a number of satellite cards and I’ve never found the bundled software to be of any real use.
That’s a good point about the flying lead taking the strain off the usb port, the coax that I have isn’t very flexible.
If I get positive results from the USB tuner I’d be interested in looking at a PCI or PCIe card, possibly with multiple tuners. But I won’t think about that just yet – if I get a cheap solution working to begin with I’d be happy.