ADS Technologies - Instant TV Video Recorder
Conventional
VCRs are being replaced by a variety of new products. Tivo, DVD recorders
and other hard drive based set-top boxes appeal to the masses and offer
a great way to time-shift programs. These new products offer much simpler
user interfaces and far more flexibility than what many have become accustomed
to with VCRs. PCs are even becoming an integral part of today's home entertainment
systems with DVD and hard drive based recording and playback features.
Many of the newer PCs come with built-in TV tuners. For those lacking
a tuner in their computer, ADS Technologies has introduced Instant
TV, an inexpensive ($80 street price) way to get this capability using
a standard high-speed USB 2.0 port. The Instant TV features a small
external tuner console that interfaces directly to a cable line or rooftop
antenna and connects to the PC's USB 2.0 port. Power is provided by the
USB interface, so there is no need for a separate power adapter. The setup
also includes a small credit card sized IR remote control.
The
product features a 125 channel NTSC tuner that streams audio and video
to the connected computer through the high speed USB interface. Command
and control is also handled through this interface. Ulead's Video@Home
2 software is included with the system and offers an all-in-one video
package that lets users record, playback, and burn TV programs or other
audio and video to disc. A featured called Disc-Direct™ recording
allows users to save time and hard drive space by creating sharable video
files that are used to write to Video CD and DVD discs. Using the Web-based
Electronic Program Guide from TitanTV.com, users won't miss their favorite
TV shows because they can schedule recordings with a simple click of a
button once they set up their free account.
The Video@Home 2 software has a host of features that include a Video Color Manager for adjusting brightness, contrast, hue and saturation (color). The TV Channel Manager allows the user to define the region (USA), TV system (NTSC in our case), cable/antenna and channel name. It is also possibe to record directly from a DV camcorder to disc. Once recorded material is saved, a playlist can be created by simply using the Playlist window and selecting the files of interest. Once the files are defined, the user clicks on the Save button. For quick recording, the user can right-click the record button and select a predefined recording time (30 min, 60 min, 90 min or 120 min). Users can also use a list of keyboard shortcuts to quickly access functions.
The
front of the tuner box has two LEDs, one for power (red) and the other
(green) to indicate reception of the remote control commands. The back
of the external tuner box has the USB interface and an F-connector for
the cable or antenna input. Also included is a composite and s-video input
along with a 3.5mm two-channel audio input allowing users to capture audio
and video from analog sources such as camcorders. There's also a 3.5mm
two-channel audio pass-thru connector identical to the audio input connector.
This output only passes the input signal and does not send audio from
the recorded sources.
Remote
The small remote included with the system is small and looks similar to
the remotes that often come with camcorders. Personally, we would prefer
a larger remote, but it does provide adequate functionality. The remote
uses a button battery that is included with the system. Standard features
such as Power, Input Select, Mute, Volume, Channel Select, Record, Play/Pause,
Fast Forward, Rewind and Stop. The remote also includes a Jump
button used to toggle between the current and previous channel selected.
This is a nice feature if you happen to be watching two programs. The
T/S button is used to put the software into a Time-Shift mode, where you
can pause, rewind and fast-forward through programs. This mode creates
a recording buffer that allows you to use the Time-Shift features.
Setup
We installed Instant TV on our Sony VAIO Laptop (PCV-K23) without
any problems. ADS specifically instructs the user to first install the
drivers, so we did that and then installed the Ulead software. Once the
software was installed, we connected the external external tuner box via
the USB cable. The system immediately recognized the hardware and after
a minute or so we were ready to go. The remote LED on the receiver unit
flashes any time the remote sends commands. This provide the user with
a visual verification of commands being recieved. Pressing Power
on the remote launches the Video@Home 2 software.
Performance
Instant TV is a simple and inexpensive system to install. We liked
the USB 2.0 interface simply because we avoided opening up the machine.
In addition, using a standard USB 2.0 port lends itself well to laptops
as tested in our case. Picture quality was sufficient, but not great since
the source was coming for an analog NTSC signal. We did see some Y/C separation
artifacts that are common in low cost TV decoders. Other than our
critical review of the picture, it functioned well. As a PVR it did a
good job at time shifting programs. We are a fan of TitanTV.com and have
used it with our high-definition MDP-100 PVR system with great success.
Using it with the Instant TV system was just as simple and stored our
reservations on the hard drive without a problem. Channel changing is
a bit slow especially for an analog tuner. However, most digital tuners
(SD and HD) have been this way for years, so some users might not find
it a problem.
Video can be displayed in a smaller window or full screen. Obviously full screen reveals flaws in the source, so don't expect the picture quality to rival high resolution sources. Video quality depends on the source as well as the recording mode selected. VCDs produced the most compression artifacts as one might expect, where AVI looked very good for an NTSC source. The ability to directly capture video to disc was a nice feature that worked well.
The
Ulead software has a useful display that provides information such as
Input Source, Playback Status, Elapsed Time, Audio Status, MTS Status,
Playback Speed and much more to the user. There is also a Time-Shift recording
bar on the lower section of the display that gives the user's relative
position during playback. The green portion of the display indicates the
current playback position, while the red portion is the remaining amount
of recorded material available. The great feature here is the user can
record a program and at the same time watch any part of the recorded material.
This feature worked as advertised and was very impressive. We noticed
that as we scanned forward through the recorded material towards the real-time
recording at the 2x speed, the software kicked us back into the 1x mode
automatically when we hit the end. A fast PC also helps since all of the
encoding and decoding is software based.
Conclusion
Using Instant TV is a great way to get TV on your laptop or desktop,
especially if you are on a budget. The setup was simple and easy to install.
Video and audio are streamed directly from the external tuner over the
USB 2.0 port, so there is no extra cabling needed between the tuner and
computer. The Ulead software has many features and the web-based Advanced
Programming Guide provided by TitanTV.com makes programming simple. For
under $100, you get a good product with a full set of features for making
time-shifted recordings with full access to the media as it is recording.
- Kevin Nakano