Artec T14A Mini USB 2.0 HDTV tuner

[Peter Nagy]

Ever seen this before? It's supposed to be MCE 2005 certified. I have not seen the reviews. $99 from zipzoomfly. See it at:

http://www.maxgroup.com/Products/det...em=AR10TV-T14A

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...=324900&ps=ho3

It looks like this is their web site: http://www.ultima.com.tw/ehtm/be124.htm

Anyone else has it?

Peter

[CityK]

Its about time one of these devices showed up There are a number of such usb pen/thumb/stick receivers for DVB-T

[SUOrangeman]

This device seems to be in the news again (HTPCNews via PCAlchemy). I assume that it requires another tuner for MCE functionality because it is ATSC-only (i.e., MCE must have an NTSC tuner before it can handle an ATSC-only device). Is this correct?

-SUO, never used a tuner with MCE ... yet

[jgallup04]

Yes, for this to work in MCE it must also have an analog TV tuner installed. This is not a limitation of the card, its a limitation of MCE.

The card also works as a HD tuner without MCE using their software, but the software leaves a lot to be desired (what do you expect when the runer and software is only $89), but it does work.

This card is only $89 over at Pcalchemy with free shipping!

[jimwhite]

How about this one?? It adds NTSC and QAM !!!!

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec....iteria=AA48730

Mwave Part Number: AA48730

Manufacturer Part Number: FDUSB728

Manufacturer Web Site: www.fujiplus.com


Description:

Advanced TV Application Watch atsc/ntsc TV on your PC, instantly playback or fast-forward live programs any time you like.
Digital Personal Video Recording you can record your digital TV programs to your hard disk, and play them back in full original digital quality!
High Definition & Crystal Clear Video Quality Experience the crystal clear video quality of HDTV at high resolution up to 1080i
Features:


HDTV ATSC DTV Receiving
Support NTSC and Analog TV System
MPEG II DxVA Accelerator Support
HDTV Real Time Recording and Scheduling Recording
Analog TV Real Time Recording and Scheduling Recording
Wakeup the System for Recording when PC is in Sleep Mode
DTV Time-Shifting
Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
Closed Caption
Single / Multiple Still Frame Picture Capture (BMP)
Multi Channel Preview
Channels Auto Scan
Scan by Easy / Advance Mode
Off-Center Frequency Scan
Favorite List with LCN support
Multi DTV Language Audio Support
Classify TV Program Management
4:3 / 16:9 Screen Aspect Ratio
Video Adjustment
Parental Control Password
Antenna Utility
Signal Strength / Quantity Indicator
USB Bus Power Only
IR Remote Controller Support
Software Upgradeable

Technical Information:

Tuner

Input Terminal: 75 Ohm Male F Connector
Receiving Frequency: 42 ~ 862 MHz
Operation Condition Temperature Range: -10? ~ 60?
Support MCPC and SCPC
VSB & QAM

Fully ATSC Compliant
ATSC A/53 compliant 8/16VSB and MMDS 2/4/8VSB receiver
ITU-T J.83 Annex B/C, SCTE DVS-031 compliant 64/256QAM receiver
Integrated 10-bit A/D converter
All digital demodulation
Parallel/Serial MPEG-2 transport interface
Supports I2C bus interface
Boundary Scan Test circuit complies to the IEEE Std. 1149.1
Supports 44MHz IF input as well as low IF input (6MHz)
Operating voltage (I/O, Core): 3.3V & 1.8V
USB Interface

Universal Serial Bus 2.0 Standard
Digital Transport Stream Support
Up to 30 MB/sec isochroous Video Pipe Transfer
Up to 0.2 MB/sec isochroous Audio Pipe Transfer
Up to 3 MB/sec isochroous Transport Stream Pipe Transfer
A Type USB Male Connector
De-Multiplexing

Engine: Software
Stream capture: PES & TS
DTV A/V Format

Video format: MPEG-II Main Profile& Main Level
Video Resolution: Up to 1080i
Audio format: MPEG-II Audio layer I & II
Analog Audio / Video Decoder

18 Bits Audio ADC
9 Bits Video Digitizing
NTSC TV System Support
VBI Data Capture
Closed Caption Decode
Software and Hardware capabilities

Software upgradeable
Channel Data Base updateable
Interrupt share avoid hardware interrupt conflicts with other devices
Automatic channel parsing
Environment

Temperature : 0 ~60 C
Storage temperature:-55~85 C
Humidity (Operating): 10%~90%
Atmosphere: 20~95%
System Requirements:

Minimum PC Requirements

Microsoft Windows XP (SP2)
One Free USB2.0 Port
CPU P4 / Turion3.7, 2GHz or Above
256 RAM or up
VGA with 32MB or up
Sound Card or On Board sound Chip
DirectX 9.0 or up
Microsoft Media Player 9.0 or up
UHF/VHF DTV antenna or CATV signal

[GeekFunk]

Does anyone know of the specific brand ASTC tuner that these two products use?

Conexant? BrookTree?

[CityK]

Originally Posted by GeekFunk

Conexant? BrookTree?

Effectively one and the same .... Brooktree was purchased by Rockwell. Rockwell went on to spin off its semiconductor division as Conexant.

Although Conexant does design some frontend components, it is unlikely that you'd find any of their ICs constituting the receiver for such PC devices ... though, if we were talking about the A/V decoders & bridges on these PC devices, then Conexant would be one of the usual suspects...but not for the receiving section

Does anyone know of the specific brand ASTC tuner that these two products use?

The Artec apparently uses the LG DT3303 demodulator. No idea on the tuner IC.
(No idea for the USB bridge either......Other questions of interest would be whether it also contains an analog demod & A/V decoder or if it is purely a digital receiver).

No idea on the componentry used for the "Fujiplus", but it clearly contains a full compliment.

[clintroberts]

Okay, I received the Artec and the VBOX. Installed the Artec. It's kind of cool they can put a digital tuner in something this small. The graphics for the interface are pretty cool and the supplied antennae (though I did not try) is kind of cool. Then it all went downhill. First scan which takes 4 minutes pulled in two channels. Both we a little skippy and the audio didn't line up with the video. Ran another scan...4 minutes...and got 4 channels which was 2 regular channels and 2 sub channels (weather). All had audio synch problems too. Did another scan and got 7 but only two worked. So I gave up and removed it. Boy does that little thing get hot. Now to try the VBOX as this isn't worth the $80. No recording options whatsoever either. Another deal breaker. Just as a background I am running a Dell 9300 laptop with a fresh install to factory default with 512MB memory and Solo 1.6 centrino and 128 vdedicated video memory. I'll post after the VBOX is installed. Too early in the day to see what HD would look like (or at least non of the very few channels I pulled in were broadcasting in HD.)

Maybe if you had closer reception but I pull in all major channels (4,5,8,11,13&33 on a LG 3510) so I don't think that's it.

My final verdict is a return to seller...

[clintroberts]

Well, still working on the VBOX as I might of selected something wrong so after 4 blue screens of death (memory dump) and a system restore I got it installed. The disc says for Media Center which I do not have. It was not clear on pcalchemy's site about this and I got a 10% off (last day was the other day) so who knows what they'll do for me as I need BeyondTV. I am downloading a trial but there was a package deal and it also included a remote. Well let's see if we can get it working. I'll update more later after I have had a chance to "check some channels.".

[jimwhite]

got my Artec today and with the supplied antenna it pulls in the same channels as my MyHD MDP-100 with Silver Sensor antenna up in my 3rd floor walk-in-closet office.... no recording in the supplied app (I updated to the 1.0.3 version on the website), but MCE works fine with it.... wish my ancient circa 2001 Vaio laptop had a USB2 port....

my Fujiplus should come next week....

[clintroberts]

I got a "this page cannot be displayed" when trying to download the new driver for the Artec.

It took me a while to find it even with the link up top...

http://info.ultima.com.tw/fae/Servic...me/drivers.htm

[clintroberts]

Originally Posted by jimwhite

got my Artec today and with the supplied antenna it pulls in the same channels as my MyHD MDP-100 with Silver Sensor antenna up in my 3rd floor walk-in-closet office.... no recording in the supplied app (I updated to the 1.0.3 version on the website), but MCE works fine with it.... wish my ancient circa 2001 Vaio laptop had a USB2 port....

my Fujiplus should come next week....

I wish my instance would of been as easy as yours. I am not running MCE though. See below for my VBOX review.

[clintroberts]

So I now attempted the VBOX but of course I had to download the Trial version of Beyond TV. I do like that software if I could figure out how to jsut label the channels 4, 5, 8 etc. But I still had issues with the VBOX. It was not as bad as the Artec. I did break out a HP DV1000 (about the same specs as the Dell but integrated video memory) and try it on that as well with BeyondTV. It seemed to be working for about 3-4 minutes until I had to change the channel. I then wanted to watch So You Think You Can Dance (yes I did, please no flames) so I hooked the ANT cable back to the LG 3510 and watched it on the plasma without any hiccups. Afterwards i went back to the VBOX but it messed up. Not the audio synch problems but the video couldn't keep up and then it started freezing on me and Beyond TV started getting stuck. Maybe after I have some energy tomorrow I will take it over and try it on my nephew Dell 9300 with MCE and 256MB video memory. Really wish these would work.

Oh, by the way with 15-21 GB of hard drive space BeyondTV kept giving me a warning that I could only record 1 hour. So I didn't really think about how much space I would need to record. BeyondTV has some conversion stuff but that depends on other factors.

Boy, I have been waiting for a cheap solution like these for say three years and now to my disappointment I can't simply install it and watch.

Tomorrow from Buy.com comes the AutumnWave/Onair but it's $179. I ordered it before these and then found these cheaper one. But it shipped before I could cancel.

[TPeterson]

Clint--

It appears to me that you don't have the minimum system req'ts met for the Artec, as it specifies "P4 3 GHz for HDTV" (i.e., the OTA stations you're trying to view). In that case, it's no surprise that you see A/V synch issues and other problems.

My question is just how many people are going to have laptop machines, implied by the Artec website to be the intended host, that have 3-gig P4s?

Another question is why bother to spec an 860 MHz tuner in an OTA-only widget? Oh well.

As for the VBox, you'll likely find that BTV's video card requirements for HDTV are also beyond your laptop's abilities, unless you have a very recent one.

[bathomps]

I bought the Artec as well. I did have similar issues on a IBM T42 laptop, but noticed that the cpu utilization was pretty high for some channels, especially HDTV. But I really bought this as an additional tuner for my MCE machine 3.4 Ghz P4. I already have been using an ATI HDTV Wonder as my primary ATSC tuner in MCE. It has worked well, but I am out of PCI slots and needed something external.

I was able to get it installed without too much effort and MCE was using it, but I noticed some of the shows it recorded were having issues. Like it woud loose signal for a couple of seconds during the show. I tried running it through an external powered USB hub instead of directly from the PC. This helped a little but some shows still had the issue. The ATI card never had this problem.

I am now going to send this one back and try the VBox. Its too bad, the Artec has a great small form factor and would be great as a mobile tuner, but would require a good cpu to back it up. Maybe one of the upcoming Core 2 cpus.

[clintroberts]

Originally Posted by TPeterson

Clint--

It appears to me that you don't have the minimum system req'ts met for the Artec, as it specifies "P4 3 GHz for HDTV" (i.e., the OTA stations you're trying to view). In that case, it's no surprise that you see A/V synch issues and other problems.

My question is just how many people are going to have laptop machines, implied by the Artec website to be the intended host, that have 3-gig P4s?

TPeterson, I didn't really pay much attention to the requirements (my mistake and a lot of wasted effort). I suppose that was because just about every laptop (which are what these are really made for) will be a Centrino. Just now they are coming out with Duo's and there have not been any test.

If these are for desktops, why not put a power supply in there an alleviate one possible issue!

[clintroberts]

Alright I tried the Artec with the driver on the CD (driver download from their site is still not working this morning) on my dad's Fujitsu P4 3.2 GHz laptop with 1 GB of memory. Anyway, it worked better. Still only pulled in two channels even after I ran a scan the second time. No way to manually add channels in the software so you would need a good signal. I love the size and simplicity just for watching TV and it would probably be just ok with MCE and a high end laptop and close proximity to ANT towers. But still on the Fujitsu on SD (no HD programs this morning) the video was not truly fluid. Also the top of the picture had a line but that could be the broadcast and there is no way to move the picture up like on a CRT monitor or like with BeyondTV.

Artec is going back. But it was only $80 dollars. Still going back!

[TPeterson]

Just because the image is not 16:9 doesn't mean that it's "SD". Most DTV stations up-rez all of their transmissions to the same format, so the receiver has to deal with 1920x1080i even though the content is actually 704x480i. IOW, you're not likely to see any worse rendition of primetime actual HD material than what you saw in the a.m.

[clintroberts]

See my review of the OnAir GT here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...81#post8007681

Bottom line is this T14A and the VBOX are a waste of time compared to the GT!

[jimwhite]

got the Fuji Plus last night.... initial views are MUCH better than the Artec... more later...

[clintroberts]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...9&page=2&pp=20

Size comparison (picture) of the Artec, VBOX and the OnAir GT located at thread/link above!

[hperry]

Originally Posted by jimwhite

got the Fuji Plus last night.... initial views are MUCH better than the Artec... more later...

Jim, any more to add on the fujiplus? Any idea if it is supported by MCE2005?

Thanks!

[Zeros]

Jim, if you get a minute, I would like to hear your thoughts on the FujiPlus tuner. Thanks!

[Todd]

I just ordered the FujiPlus tuner from NewEgg. I'll let you know how it goes once I get it!

[jimwhite]

The FujiPlus is MUCH better than the Artek, pulling in as many stations (on the same antenna) as my Fusion USB tuner.... I'm a bit PO'd that they've pulled the claimed QAM support, saying it was a marketing mistake .... the REALLY intriguing thing is that it seems to be able to work as BOTH an NTSC and ATSC tuner for MCE !!!

[hperry]

It works in MCE? Okay, that's it...I'm in.

[gjlowe]

No QAM???? DAMN That is my dealbreaker!

[cimiegle]

Originally Posted by jimwhite

the REALLY intriguing thing is that it seems to be able to work as BOTH an NTSC and ATSC tuner for MCE !!!

So it has BDA drivers and it's own application?

[joeyjoeyjoey]

Originally Posted by hperry

It works in MCE? Okay, that's it...I'm in.

exactly! if this works on mce then I'll go for it as well. of course since the website says xp sp2 i just need on more push of "yes it works in mce"

[GeekFunk]

Originally Posted by jimwhite

The FujiPlus is MUCH better than the Artek, pulling in as many stations (on the same antenna) as my Fusion USB tuner. the REALLY intriguing thing is that it seems to be able to work as BOTH an NTSC and ATSC tuner for MCE !!!

Note the weasel words: "it seems to be able to work. . ."

Better wait until someone reports back here with something more diffinitive about NTSC and ATSC in the FujiPlus working in WMCE.