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This review is the second in a series of product reviews written by the SnapStream community members. This review is of the Avermedia A180 ATSC PCI TV tuner card written by ZetaVu, a member of the SnapStream community since December 2005 with more than 1,000 posts in our forums. In addition to reviewing the Avermedia A180, ZetaVu, briefly compares the card to the Hauppauge HVR-1600.
The Avermedia A180 is one of the more affordable PCI HDTV capture cards available. Originally made for MCE systems, Avermedia has since released drivers and a TV program to work with XP installations. I have been using mine for about six months now and have been extremely pleased with the performance.
Card info
The card will capture at 480p, 720p and 1080i, with widescreen support. Minimum CPU is a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz. It requires 256 MB RAM or higher, at least a 64MB video card with Directx 9, and of course a PCI slot (which are really becoming a rare commodity on motherboards these days).
One issue I’ve run into occasionally is with the way motherboards assign IRQ’s to PCI slots. Ideally you want this card in a slot that isn’t shared with other heavy drain components. On my ECS K7S5A, slot 2 or 4 are safe, slot 1 (shared with my AGP port) definitely causes stability issues. I haven’t seen any difference on any of my three PCI slots on my ASROCK 939Dual-Vsta board. I have noticed that both my A180 and my Hauppauge PVR-250 cards seem to drop frames more often on my ASROCK motherboard, but not enough to cause major concerns. If you have issues with this or any capture card in a particular PCI slot, I suggest trying other slots first.
Here are the input signal specifications from the Avermedia website:
» Input frequency range: 54MHz to 864 MHz
» Channel bandwidth: 6MHz
» Channels assignment: US standard
» Input signal level: -80dBm to -20dBm (8-VSB)
» Input impudence: 75 ohms
» Warranty: 1 year limited parts & labor
» Compliance: FCC Class B, CE
Looking at the back of the card you see one coaxial input for the HD antenna, an S-Video input, and three RCA inputs, video and stereo audio. In addition to ATSC capture, the A180 offers SD capture using either an S-Video or composite. I tried this out initially, planning to use this as a second input for satellite television, but unfortunately the SD capture is software, not hardware encoded. This resulted in a general loss in quality on my Beyond TV playback. When I had both software and hardware capture cards setup, Beyond TV defaulted playback quality to the lower setting, leading to choppy playback from software and hardware encoded cards alike. However if someone was interested in using this card to capture SD as well, you would not be able to record HD and SD content simultaneously as the card is only a single not dual tuner. I recommend using the card strictly as a single HDTV over the air (OTA) tuner.
Unlike some cards, there are no issues with using multiple ATSC cards on a system. The A180 does not support QAM recording, and while BeyondTV currently doesn’t support QAM recording later versions probably will. This would be an issue for people who do not have good OTA reception and rely on cable for their OTA channels. Most cable companies only make local channels available without encryption, so if you’re like me and have good OTA reception, this should not be an issue.
Test System
I’ve run this card on two systems, and it worked remarkably well on both. Both systems used this card strictly for HDTV capture and a Hauppauge PVR-250 for SD capture. For my PVR-250, I use coaxial input for SD quality OTA local channels and an S-Video input for my satellite receiver. Common to both systems is my 400W Allied Model AL-400atx, which 3.3v has 28A, 5v has 40A and 12V has 17A. This is more than most 450W power supplies have and has not given me any trouble no matter what I throw at it. Most stability issues can be solved by improving your poser supply. I use a custom built serial control cable for my RCA DirecTV receiver, and an ATI Remote Wonder with Girder as a remote. I have an NEC 3500 DVD burner and three IDE hard drives totaling 720 GBs.
My initial build was an ECS K7S5A with an Athalon XP2000+ processor, 1024 MB DDR memory, with an ATI All in Wonder 7500 AGP video card (I disabled the capture on that card since it also used a software encoder). Now this video card is definitely below the minimum specifications for HDTV, however I am able to use it by virtue of the ATI mpeg decoder that comes with their MultiMedia Center. Any other decoder would be extremely choppy in playback while the ATI is clear. On this board, LiveHDTV was the most difficult task, raising my CPU usage to 70%. If I skipped foreword or backward, CPU usage peaked out at 100% and the A180 would drop frames, resulting in skips and freezes in the recording. I blame this on my undersized system and not the card itself.
My current build is an ASROCK 939DUAL-Vsta, socket 939, with an AMD dual core X2 3800+ and 1024MB paired Kingston KVR400512R memory. I got this board since it supported both AGP and PCIe cards, and if I really wanted I could upgrade to AM2 with an option card. My current setup still uses my ATI 7500 card. With the new dual core processor, navigation in HD recordings was no longer an issue. I could skip, pause, jump around and there was no impact on recording quality and no dropped frames. Total CPU usage in LiveHDTV is now under 20%. I also tried this system out with a new Sapphire 1600Pro PCIe card, but honestly I did not see any improvement in playback over the 7500, and was not happy with the way Beyond TV performed in clone mode with the S-Video going to my TV set. DVI out to my HannsG 19″ monitor was equivalent for both video cards.
Antenna Signal
I am lucky enough to get very strong OTA signals in my area, and can pick up eleven stations with 98% signal, and three with poor signal. The three poor stations do not pass the BeyondTV HD channel setup, but I can manually add them to have them in my lineup. One of the channels (UPN) has poor setup results but I get clear reception when I manually add it. The other two are very poor reception however they are non-English so I don’t bother. Part of the reason I get good OTA coverage is my house came with a roof mounted antenna. I simply ran some new RG6 cable to my card and signal is excellent. I also tried using an HDTV antenna mounted to my satellite dish, but signal quality was inferior to the good old fashioned roof mounted eyesore. I would guess that the bulk of issues people have with OTA HDTV cards is poor reception.
Installation
My card arrived in an OEM box, no disk or drivers, which is fine by me. I always download and install the latest drivers, as of this writing the latest and greatest is the 3.5.0.44 for XP, downloaded from http://www.aver.com/mpd/support/download/a180.html (they also have XP64, and Vista 32 and 64 drivers). The site also has recording and TV software for non-MCE systems. I used this as initial diagnostics to compare to BeyondTV, but have since uninstalled it. I only use BeyondTV for recording but have played back in multiple programs. I’ve run this card in every 4.x build of BeyondTV, and am currently running 4.6 RC3 which I have to say has been nothing short of excellent with my system.
The card is a full height PCI card. I have read comments that the coaxial input is in a difficult to reach spot and I agree. I also nearly removed the coaxial head entirely when disconnecting my cable, so be careful when connecting and disconnecting. I do not use the s-video or RCA inputs since the do not hardware encode. The A180 does not come with an antenna, and as I’ve stated I love my roof mount antenna but any HD antenna will work. Remember, signal quality if 90% of the battle.
Product Performance
As I stated before, I’ve tried this card on both an undersized system that barely qualifies for HDTV performance, and on a dual core system that barely notices when its running. On my old undersized system the only issues I can comment on is CPU usage. When running LiveHDTV and navigating, CPU spikes to 100% and I get pauses and hesitations. Also, if guideupdate is running, CPU maxes out fairly fast. Once I moved the card to my dual core system, CPU never gets close to 100% unless I’m showsqueezing. Even then, BeyondTV adjusts so that I don’t drop frames in LiveHDTV or recordings.
One note, my motherboard will occasionally drop frames in recordings from my PVR-250 and this card, but that is a motherboard communication issue, not a card issue. For the PVR-250, this can lead to incorrect video lengths in BeyondTV. For the A180, this leads to a dropped frame and nothing more. These issues can be detected and addressed using a program called VideoRedo.
Recording quality on 720p and 1080i shows is excellent. I send the signal to my 40″ Sony with S-video, and while I cannot display HD resolution on that TV, the captured signal is clear and without artifacts. If I have poor signal quality from the antenna (or a bad storm) I will see freezes and hesitations in the recording, otherwise it is digital perfect. On my 19″ DVI monitor, the recordings are even clearer. If I want to keep a recording, I can showsqueeze it to one of the High Def DIVX settings and it plays back with no artifacts.
Hardware wise, I have only one issue with this card and again that is related specifically to my motherboard. If I try to go into S3 (suspend to RAM) standby on my ASROCK 939Dual-Vsta after making an HD recording (or watching LiveHDTV) then my computer will freeze when I try to wake it. After contacting both Avermedia and ASROCK it turns out this is a driver conflict with the ASROCK board. Unfortunately, ASROCK has discontinued the 939Dual-Vsta, so they won’t be addressing it. I tried the card on another board and there was no S3 conflict.
Comparison to the Hauppauge HVR-1600
Unlike the A180, the HVR-1600 is a dual tuner card, having one HD and one SD input. The SD tuner has a coaxial and S-Video input, and is a hardware encoder. There is no composite input, and the audio comes in through a 1/8″ stereo plug like the PVR-250, so you will need an adaptor for your RCA audio cables. There is a connector on the side of the card which I haven’t explored yet. It also comes with an IR receiver and blaster. As a result, this card is a priced higher than the A180, but then again we are comparing prices of a dual tuner with an IR blaster and receiver to a single tuner card. For comparative purposes, I’m mainly going to focus on the similarities between these cards.
During system setup, BeyondTV recognizes both the HD tuner and the SD tuner, letting me setup three possible inputs, HD coaxial, SD coaxial, and S-video. I only setup HD Coaxial and S-video (I don’t need another OTA SD tuner). I did notice that HD channel setup had slightly lower results than the A180, ranging from 94-96 vs. 98% on the A180. Any channel at 94% did not automatically get selected and I had to select them myself. This could have been weather when I ran the setup. When testing in LiveHDTV, all channels came in perfectly without any skips or artifacts.
In order to use the dual tuner on the HVR-1600, you need BeyondTV 4.6 — 4.5 doesn’t support the dual tuner, you can only record one tuner at a time. I was able to record on both the ATSC and the S-Video on my HVR-1600 simultaneously in 4.6 RC3, and neither recording had any artifacts. System CPU was less than 15%. Playback was again perfect on both my TV and DVI monitor. Another thing I noticed was that my S3 standby issue I had with the A180 didn’t occur with the HVR-1600, so I will be pestering both Avermedia and ASROCK about this. In my few test recordings with the HVR-1600, I had no issues with dropped frames related to my motherboard. I plan to continue testing this over the next several weeks and will post my findings in the forums.
Now, some comments on the HVR-1600: My unit came OEM without remote, and so far I have not gotten my PVR-250 remote to work with the HVR-1600 IR receiver yet. Since I use a Remote Wonder this isn’t a big deal. The literature says the IR receiver won’t work with TV or VCR remotes, but I was able to get the PVR-250 receiver to work with a Toshiba VCR remote and hope to eventually do similar with this receiver. The installation CD that came with the card is designed for their WinTV2000 application, I suggest you go to this site for their IR receiver and blaster software, as well as IR blaster instructions. I’m not currently using the IR blaster, but I plan to experiment with it and girder once they have plug-ins for this blaster.
Another comment, the HVR-1600 IR receiver cable is almost a foot shorter than the PVR250 cable, which is unfortunate for those of us running cables through a wall (I keep my computer in a room next to my family room so it can get good ventilation and noise is not an issue). The IR blaster cable is several feet longer which is a big benefit. Also the IR plug fits in the HVR-1600 securely; my PVR-250 IR plug fit loosely and comes out all too easily.
Another point is also QAM support. The HVR-1600 currently is does not support QAM, although there are posts stating that older drivers for the card listed it as QAM capable, newer drivers seem to have dropped this. I cannot confirm any of this, but nothing in the literature discusses QAM support for this card, and again I don’t have any ways to test it.
Final Conclusions
If you are looking for an inexpensive but quality OTA HD tuner, the Avermedia A180 is a reasonably priced choice. In my opinion you can use this as a great HDTV tuner, and while it is capable of capturing SD through composite or s-video I don’t recommend it because it does not have hardware encoding. You cannot record SD from antenna with this card. The quality is just as good as what I’ve seen from the more expensive HVR-1600 card. You get ATSC capture with none of the frills, and of course no QAM. Biggest issue is whether you have a free PCI slot.
The HVR-1600 is a little more expensive than the A180, but you get a lot more in the package. This card is dual tuner, one HD and one SD. The SD will record from coaxial or S-video, but not composite, at least no without an adaptor. It also has an IR receiver and an IR blaster. So, if you are looking for a single card solution for multiple inputs, and need to control a satellite or cable box, this may be the better choice. Strictly based on HD capturing performance, both cards perform equally well and are limited only by your other hardware and the quality of your incoming antenna signal.
Yesterday, we quietly released a new point release to Beyond TV — version 4.6 — and I feel comfortable saying that this point release has more improvements than any other Beyond TV 4 point release before it. Some of the highlights from the release notes:
Existing Beyond TV 4 users: Get your free update to Beyond TV 4.6
For everyone else, download the free 21-day trial
(and if you’ve tried Beyond TV or the DVD Burning Plug-in before, you’ll get a new 21-day trial period with Beyond TV 4.6)
Some screenshots:
This search happened really fast because of Beyond TV 4.6 (you’ll just have to take my word for it)
Re-prioritize your recordings in the Web Admin a la Netflix
Beyond TV’s Web Admin now has integrated support for the DivX Web Player
This review is the first in a series of product reviews written by the SnapStream community members. This review is of the BTC 9019URF wireless RF keyboard/mouse written by terminal, a member of the SnapStream community since April 2002 with more than 2,000 posts in our forums.
About a week ago, SnapStream gave me the opportunity to get a free BTC 9019URF wireless keyboard. All I had to do was review it. Since I like ‘free’ very much, I said yes. This actually occurred at a pretty opportune time because I had been looking for a new wireless keyboard. The BTC seemed like it would fit the bill quite nicely.
My needs are pretty simple for my PVR keyboard. It’s seldom used — only for the occasional install or hardware change. Since I can also log into my server remotely, the keyboard is only pulled out occasionally. Accordingly, I need something compact that I can easily store when it’s not in use. My current keyboard is a Parex Webboard, and it has served me very well. Someone on the SnapStream forums pointed me to it. I purchased it 4 years ago this month and it has started to show some signs of wear. It uses the PS2 ports on my PC and uses infrared (IR). So I thought I might like to move up to something a little newer. The IR on my Parex Webboard was a bit of a pain, as I could never sit back in a recliner and use it — my big feet kept getting in the way. I was always moving it this way or that to get it to make contact with the IR receiver. So I was looking forward to switching to the BTC 9019URF, since it was radio-frequency (RF) instead of infrared like the Parex.
First impressions
Well right off the bat I was a little disappointed because the BTC was a little bigger than I would have liked. My Webboard was compact and fit nicely on top of my case with room for my wireless bridge to sit behind it. The BTC keyboard, with the handles on each side, is just as big as a regular desktop keyboard. I could pick up my Webboard with one hand from front to back, but the BTC keyboard is too deep for that. But the BTC’s handles on each end make it just as easy to pick up with one hand. As you can see from the picture the BTC 9019URF, the top keyboard, is quite a bit larger than my original keyboard. The next picture shows it beside a standard logitech desktop keyboard.
The BTC 9019 compared to my old Parex Webboard
BTC 9019 compared to a full-size keyboard
The layout and feel of the BTC keyboard is quite nice. The mouse/joystick is a little awkward to use, but no more so than my webboard or any keyboard with this type of arrangement, I imagine.
Installation
The installation can be tricky so play close attention to the following steps.
Step 1 Put batteries in the keyboard. It takes two AA batteries, which are provided.
Step 2 Plug it in to a USB port. It works with USB 2.0 or 1.1.
Step 3 Done.
Got that? OK so maybe that was actually pretty easy. 
When I installed the keyboard for the first time I thought it wasn’t working. I had the receiver sitting on top of my computer (see position #1 in the picture below). From the angle I was at, the TV was blocking the receiver, even though I was only about 2-feet away. When I placed the keyboard right in front of the receiver it started working. I ended up moving it up on top of my TV (see position #2) and from there it did seem to function, until I started moving away from the TV. I usually sit in one of three places in my living room. The maximum distance I sit from the TV is about 10-feet. This was about the limit of the receiver, like my IR keyboard I had to sit on the edge of the furniture in order to have consistent functionality. From what I gathered from the instructions (I am still working on improving my engrish) it has 255 different IDs that can be selected by pressing a connect button on the receiver and then a connect button on the keyboard. I went through this procedure a number of times, trying a few different IDs, but the reception never seemed to get any better. And I was not going to try it 255 times.
In the end, the cause of my range problem was the television set itself. I had written a pretty scathing review of the BTC, but then I thought I should see if others using this keyboard had seen similar results. From the few reviews I found, most people seemed to be happy with the range. So I decided I should try again. I ended up getting out a USB extension cable and moved the receiver about 5 feet out in front of the TV (see position #4). I can now move anywhere in my living room, a maximum distance of about 12 feet, and the keyboard works great. In fact, I was even able to go to my office, log into my server with VNC and operate the Viewscape with the BTC keyboard. My office is probably 20 to 25 ft. away.
Position #3 is where I would like to put it. The problem is that any of the positions around the TV work no better than my IR keyboard.
BTC 9019 receiver placement in my living room
Usage
The keyboard is a pretty standard keyboard layout with 13 buttons across the top. These extra keys can be programmed for various functions. They could be set to control volume, skip ahead, skip back… well you get the idea. To be able to use these functions you need to install the driver disk that comes with the keyboard, but I just needed a keyboard and mouse, and since this is my primary PVR server, I do not install anything on it that is not absolutely necessary. So I left the disk alone.
The joystick mouse on the BTC 9019URF is very responsive and easy to use. I sometimes trim the ends of movies using Hauppauge’s video editing software. This software only works on a computer that has a Hauppauge TV tuner installed, so I have to make the edits on the server. Using my Webboard this was always a bit tricky because the joystick mouse on it was pretty much binary. The pointer was either stopped or moving full speed across the screen. The pointer on the BTC 9019URF, on the other hand, accelerates the mouse pointer as you move the it further out towards its extremes. It also moves very smoothly. I used it to trim a file and it was much easier to move to the point I wanted to in the file. You would have to use the Hauppauge software to realize how tricky this can be. Being able to get close to the point you want to trim to is important and the BTC keyboard mouse made this quite easy.
The keys on the keyboard feel pretty much like any basic keyboard. For me, and I imagine for most who are using this for a PVR, speed typing is not something that will come up a lot. Even though the box says this keyboard is “Smart for the Multimedia and Gamesâ€? I wouldn’t want to try and play a game or have to type 60 words a minute using this keyboard (although my typing 60 words a minute on any keyboard is pretty much never going to happen). For a basic keyboard mouse combo, however, it’s fine.
Bottom line
Pros
Easy to install
Nice layout
Light and easy to handle
Cons
Might have some issues with range.
A bit to big for my taste
So, all in all it’s a nice keyboard and works well with a PVR.
I came across this posting from Feb 9, 2007 by Dan on the alt.tv.tech.hdtv group:
I have an Athlon X2 4600+ with 3 tuners running Beyond TV 4.6 beta. The
HD tuner cards are:
Dvico Fusion 5 Lite $99
Kworld ATSC-110 $68
ATI HDTV Wonder $?? I would go with Dvico all the way…I also use the ATI HDTV Wonder analog tuner when necessary.
I have about 2300 GB of storage (2.3 Terabytes), i.e. 7 Hard Drives, consisting of 3 IDE and 4 SATA.
All of the above works GREAT! I highly recommend Snapstream Beyond TV. I also have Beyond TV Link on 3 other PC’s, but it does take a bit of CPU to accomplish this magic. I love the fact that Beyond TV can mark commercials and squeeze a 2.5 hour movie (in HD format) to 2 GB without noticable problem.
Dan, I’m glad you like Beyond TV… thanks for the praise.
With the popularity of place-shifting*, we often get the question from users about how they can do place-shifting with Beyond TV. While Beyond TV has some legacy technology built-in for place-shifting, we’ve never pushed this to being a full feature. The best way to do place-shifting as a Beyond TV user is to use one of the fine 3rd party place-shifting solutions like Slingbox and Orb.
So if you’re looking to do place-shifting with Beyond TV, check out this blog posting by one of our users, Warren, about using Orb 2.0 and Beyond TV together:
…I’ve been using Orb regularly to to view TV from the DVR setup I have at home in the office. The DVR system consist of a Hauppauge USB 2 Tuner (with the hardware mpeg2 encoder) and I’m using Snapstream’s Beyond TV, Vers. 4.5. This combination makes for a heck of dvr setup…
And one of the cool things about Orb (or so I hear… I haven’t actually tried it out myself) is that you can also run it on any Windows Mobile phone, Sony Playstation PS3 or Nintendo Wii.
(* What is place-shifting you ask? It’s the act of watching your recordings or live TV from outside your home… come on, I know you’ve heard of Slingbox!)
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