USB TV Tuners
It wasn’t that long ago that the only way to watch a High Definition TV
(HDTV) broadcast was to own a TV with a HDTV tuner.
PC’s are perfect for anything digital so it wasn’t too long before cards
for your PCI connection in your computer became available. The USB TV
tuners in your PC basically enabled you to turn your PC into a HDTV. Today
the technology is small enough to fit into a box that slots into a spare
USB port.
SASEM Co., Ltd., a South Korean company, were the first to launch an
external USB HDTV dongle in December of 2004 called the OnAir USB HDTV.
OnAir is a software-decoding USB HDTV receiver that connects to the PC via
a spare USB port.
It is meant to play live analog and digital TV hassle-free and record them
in PVR format. These units were first introduced to the American and
Canadian markets in January 2004.
The biggest advantage of USB TV tuners is that they are plug and play. You
don’t have to open up your PC to install them. The earlier PCI cards are
limited to run only on desktop PCs. Disassembling and reassembling the
computer to plug in PCI tuner cards on motherboards is also risky.
Some PCI cards fail to install on certain desktop PCs because they collide
with other hardware devices. Keeping the signal external and away from the
interference on the inside of the box also helps you receiver a clearer
signal.
With a USB TV tuner and an LCD monitor (which most people have nowadays)
you can enjoy full HDTV of 1920×1080(ATSC) resolution images. Like having
the TV on all the time? Well now you can have a dynamic wallpaper on your
computer that is actually the TV image playing (with sound as well of
course). So you won’t miss any of the sportscast or the latest news while
you work on your spreadsheets.
With and MPEG2 Encoder chip on most USB TV tuners users are able to record
directly to DVD in MPEG2 DVD format (720×480). Using DVD-RW it is easy for
the user to create DVD titles for recorded live analog TV.
Need more detail? You now have the ability to zoom into a particular part
of the image in real time.
These days you don’t even have to be sitting at your desk to control your
USB TV tuner. Just about every model will have an included remote control.
The time shift offers the ability to record live TV while playing the live
analog TV for pre-defined period of time.
