Review of the AITech HDTV USB Tuner

The AITech tuner is one of several USB HDTV tuners, mainly aimed at the booming laptop market. This tuner can be easily installed and setup, and will function with the enclosed antenna anywhere a relatively strong over the air signal is available. Of course it can pull in as many stations as a PCI based tuner (more in some cases) if attached to a better indoor/outdoor antenna.

The AITech comes with it’s own small antenna and a remote that works, just don’t get more than 2 or 3 feet away from the tuner. The weak link on this tuner is the RF connector, which separates quite easily from the tuner.

On the positive side, the AITech is easy to install and is very portable. There is relatively low CPU usage with the included application and Media Center, so it should work fine with most relatively new laptops. It also runs under the new Vista Media Center.

Even though this is a hybrid tuner (does both analog & digital), the analog reception quality is poor, so I would recommend adding another tuner for analog TV.





PROS

  • Works in Media Center 2005, BeyondTV4 and SageTV with other digital tuners, and with or without analog tuner
  • Installs in a minute (software and hardware)
  • Don’t have to open the case or taking up a PCI slot
  • No internal card to cool and less power consumption than a standard PCI card
  • Great for Laptops, even the included antenna fits easily in a carrying case

    CONS

  • Gets fairly warm,but not hot, when in use
  • The connector between the antenna and the tuner comes loose easily
  • The included antenna only pulls-in strong local stations (10-15 miles away)
  • Doesn’t show correct signal strength in MCE Digital TV Signal Strength
  • The membrane remote is poor quality
  • Picture jerky when using Closed Caption Decoder

    Features

  • USB 2.0 Interface
  • Video Resolution: Up to 1080i
  • Video & Audio format: MPEG-2
  • Closed Caption Decoder

    System Requirements.

  • Microsoft Windows XP (SP2) or Media Center Edition 2005
  • Desktop or Notebook with one Free USB 2.0 Port
  • P4 2.0GHz CPU or above
  • 256M RAM or above
  • VGA Card with at the least 32MB Memory or Above
  • Sound Card or On Board Sound Chip
  • Microsoft Direct X 9.0 or above
  • Microsoft Media Player 9.0 or above
  • UHF/VHF Antenna for ATSC and Analog TV
  • CATV Signal for Analog Cable TV



    Package Includes

  • AITech HDTV USB Tuner (Size about 3”x1.2”x0.5)
  • Portable ATSC Antenna
  • Remote Control and Battery
  • USB Cable Line
  • A/V connector for composite input
  • Installation CD

    **Special thanks to AITech for supplying the tuner used in this review**

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