Home > Consumer Reviews > Sabrent TV-USBHD Dual ATSC & Digital HDTV and Analog TV Tuner / Video Capture USB 2.0 Pendrive with Remote Control and Antenna Vista Ready

This worked for me quite well, and I'm glad I chose this tuner. The picture and sound, especially with HD, are perfect. You have to have good reception though. I hooked mine up to an old, outdoor analogue antenna and got fairly good results. Better reception than on my analogue TV with converter box. I then tried the included antenna outside, stuck to the side of my house. I get all 14 of my local channels and the reception on digital channels is great. Of course, analogue will be useless in a few months. I strongly recommend a good, outdoor digital antenna with this. Without good reception, you'll have a host of problems, including video and audio getting out of sync (which can be corrected by reloading the channel) and poor picture/sound quality, etc.. It's fairly resource intensive on HD channels, and multitasking can sometimes be a problem, albeit very little. This is the cheapest, and I think, the best way to get HDTV, though, because of the DVR functions and the convenience of it.

The included software (Blaze HDTV Player 3.5) is adequate, and has some nice features, but is rather buggy and leaves a lot to be desired. There are other software solutions, like the great freeware The KMPlayer and Cyberlink Powercinema (not worth your trouble). VLC also supports ATSC in a new, beta version. None of which, of course, will work with the remote. After trying about four other programs, I'm back to Blaze though. It's actually pretty good, comparatively. Its included Electronic Program Guide is a bit of a joke, and necessary to schedule recordings, but there's a good, online guide at[...]. And, so far, I haven't been able to get Blaze to work on multiple monitors.

To summarize, I highly recommend it *if* you can get good reception. I recommend "Antennas Direct DB2 Multi Directional HDTV Antenna," if the included antenna doesn't work for you. Digital reception should get better in June though, when stations make the full conversion to DTV.

[update] My Sierra 881 aircard causes this tuner to not work. I can go from having all channels, to only a few, when the aircard is inserted in the expresscard slot, suggesting that the wireless signal interferes with the TV signal.

1- What I don't like:
I basically buy it because of the price and because it came with the little antenna and the remote control, but both are useless, with the remote you have to be so close to the laptop that at the end is easier with the keyboard to change the channels or turn on the volume and the antenna does not help at all to get air channels, as a workaround you can try one of those rabbit ears antenna.
2-The good part:
The device itself works fine with cable and it is easy to install, the software is nice too and easy to record and set it up to record a program while you're gone.

A good option for traveling or record something that you don't want to miss

The TV-USBHD tuner is very easy to install; in order to tune Analog or HDTV channels you might have to do several attempts (by try and error) to select Analog or HDTV source, but when you figure out that you are done (Right click over display area...). The scanning of the channels could take a lot of time, just make sure your antena is placed well and you don't live in a basement he he, otherwise good.

Dell latitude D610, 2Megs RAM. It took several tries and about 5 hours to get this device to work. Once you get it working it is just ok. Analog reception is as good as any analog tuner I have (5). Digital reception is sub-par, less than any of the (4) DTV tuners I have.
My best digital receiver gets 10 channels (I live in the sticks) the best I can get is 3 with this tuner.

Am I going to send it back, NO. Would I get another NO.
Seems to have a problem with the software recording past midnight. keeps recording but screen freezes.

If just for casual use, and you don't rely on it to record than you can get by.

I have no problem with the remote, I taught my RF-20 all the commands and it works great. The original remote will not let you change from analog to digital (which sucks)(or from one source to another) so you will still need to mouse around to get what you want.

OK for casual use. If you want more, pay more, I wish I had.

this tuner was a little finiky to program but once i told it to catch digital only it performed perfectly.i also caught several channels with an amplified antenna.great for power outages.