Friday March 29, 2024

Kworld VStream X-Pert TV-PVR USB 2.0 TV Tuner Card Review

Upgraded Laptop Memory 256mb -> 768mb
I'd been meaning to upgrade my laptop's memory for quite some time and thought this would be an excellent excuse to go ahead and do it. The new memory arrived, I again setup the TV tuner and things seemed a little smoother -- but not smooth enough. I was still experiencing some audio drop-outs and syncing issues, more than I would have liked to anyway. Watching live TV wasn't too bad, but if I would go into the highest resolution it was noticeably pushing the hardware to its limits. Where I was seeing the biggest problem was trying to record a high quality MPEG -- I don't know if I was maxing out USB bandwidth with having both a TV Tuner card & sound card transferring data at once or if my 5400rpm hard drive in my laptop couldn't keep up, but all the tweaking of MPEG quality settings and video preview settings did not solve my problems.

More on compatibility & the software
This TV Tuner card uses a proprietary chipset from what I've found out. I was unable to get any software PVR for Windows XP to recognize it as a TV Tuner device. The software it comes with is proprietary and looks like something you'd expect to have seen in the Windows 95 or early Windows 98 eras. You don't have any other options, you must use the software that comes with the device.

What I liked
I liked the idea of having a USB TV Tuner Card -- that's about it. I would think if you're looking for a cheap solution for a dorm room and have an adequate computer that meet the hardware requirements, you might be able to get by with this device. If you're looking to transfer any home videos or do anything remotely professional, look elsewhere -- I would recommend a Hauppauge card for any professional video editing.

What I didn't like
For some, this card might work for their purposes, but in my case it did not. I wanted to be able to use my 1.4ghz laptop to capture video without issues, but was never able to successfully get the Kworld X-Pert TV-PVR to work without having some sort of audio sync issue or sound drop-outs. Its hardware requirements are high for a reason, it's using software to process the live feed into an MPEG and your computer will take a beating. Make sure you have at least a 2ghz processor & 512mb RAM. It's proprietary software, build-quality and performance did not meet what I had expected in a USB TV tuner card. Since I needed to purchase a USB sound card for my laptop as well, when everything was hooked up it was no longer "portable" -- too many wires and clutter. That was just one more strike against this product for me.

Overall
I learned my lesson. Shortly after finding out this product was not going to work, I purchased a Hauppauge PVR-250 PCI TV Tuner Card for my desktop computer. What a differenece, as it does all its encoding in hardware. It would have been nice to have had a TV Tuner that I could take along on vacations or to a different room in my house where there wasn't a television, but I found this card to have too many problems for my liking.

Final Rating: 3.0/5.0

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