Installation and Operation (continued):
Below we have screen shots of four of the configuration tabs. The below left screen shows the "Channel" setup tab, which allows you to select your source, tune channels automatically or manually, and name the channels so that the on screen display shows the name of the channel as well as the number. The below right image shows the "Video" setup tab, which allows you to set the basic options for video quality and appearance. You can see that an overscan of 2 pixels was used, and this eliminated thin bands of snow from the top of the screen (which were left in screen shots to be shown later on this page).
 
The below left screen shot shows the "Record" tab, which lets you adjust the quality of any recording. There are many options for file format, image size, and image quality, allowing for a good deal of customization. Users can decide exactly how they want the file to look, or how much disk space they have to use, or they can even compensate for a system with lesser specifications to make adequate recordings at lower settings. Another button provides access to the Titan TV service which allows for shows to be recorded in a simple manner, by simply browsing your local TV listings online. The below right screen shot shows the "Time Shift" tab, which allows you to record a program as you are watching it, in case you need to make a quick pit stop, etc, and want to pick up the action after a brief delay. Here again you can see that there are many quality settings, and it even advises you what processor speed is recommended for each level. The test notebook at 2.0 GHz was only 'qualified' to use "Long, Good, Better, VCD, and SVCD" according to this screen.
 
One feature of the AVerTV software is the ability to take snapshots of the screen, which was done for the two images below. The enlarged views of each is the actual BMP file grabbed by the software. At about 1MB per image you might expect better quality, but it isn't necessarily easy to take a still image of live action and expect it to look good. The images below aren't quite a fair depiction of the image quality of the video shown on screen, but they are fairly close.
 
The video quality while watching TV was actually better than I expected, although not the best I had seen. The colors were a bit washed out and weren't as crisp as I had seen, but then again I had never used a TV tuner on a notebook computer before. I suppose my expectations were slightly less for a PCMCIA tuner than for a PCI tuner, and they were definitely exceeded. With a bit of fiddling in the software controls, I had a good looking picture with clear stereo audio to go with it.
My expectations for recording and time shifting were even lower for use on this notebook computer given the slower (5400 RPM, ATA-133) hard drive being used for the OS, software, and recordings, and the generally slower system architecture as compared to a modern desktop machine. This notebook may have above average specifications for CPU, memory, and hard disk drive, but my experience tells me that they may not be enough for really strong performance.
More modern notebooks may experience better luck, but both recording and time shifting wound up working acceptably given the right settings. Recordings could not be set to the highest level, as the system just could not keep up. Selecting a lower resolution and a lower bit rate format eliminated most of the issues I experienced at the higher quality settings. At some higher settings you could hear the processor fan working overtime as the base of the unit become noticeably warmer. Additionally, there were dropped frames and after some time there was generally a sync issue between the io and video. Dropping the settings down significantly resulted in degraded recordings (perhaps similar to an older VHS tape), but at least the system didn't struggle and the entire recordings were enjoyable. The same can be said of time shifting... High settings proved to be too much for this notebook. Selecting "Good" was about as good as it got for the tests executed.
For use on a notebook computer, I was more interested in watching TV than recording, so overall I was fairly happy with the end results. The AVerTV Cardbus TV tuner proved to be highly capable as a TV tuner, and allowed for adequate recording functions that could obviously be improved simply given a system with stronger specifications.
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