Good personal TV viewer and recorder (Freecom DVB-T & Analog TV USB stick)

Member Name: kamal

Product:	Freecom DVB-T & Analog TV USB stick
Date:	04/06/08 (502 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Novelty factor, good picture quality with proper antena, Recording facility, Remote

Disadvantages: The sofware is ancient, Supplied antena is tiny

I wanted 2nd TV for my bedroom, and stumbled across description of this Freecom USB2 TV tuner. I did some research and bouth one for £38 (2 years ago) from amazon.co.uk.
The package arrived in 2-3 days, which also had tiny antena with it. I was not expecting any excellent picture quality, but wanted this gadget for fun and its novelty value. I installed the sofware that comes with this TV tuner. Installation was straight forward. Then I plugged in that tiny antena and started scanning for chanels. NONE found - was the answer. I visited internet forums and found that this tiny antena is not powerful enough to be used indoor. So, I went to my conservatory and tried again. This time it found 20 TV and 20 Radio chanels. The digital chanel quality of standard BBC News chanel was far better than I was expecting on my laptop. Other chanels were bit jerky. So I invested £2 and got antena cable and connected TV tuner with main antena. I had to rescan chanels and found around 35 tv and 30 radio chanels in total. It was excellent picture quality. I also realised that I can record programs on my laptop's hard drive. wow.. I don't need DVD recorder anymore..
I also invested in portable antena, so I can view TV in my bedroom. The TV reception was ok using portable antena. You have to adjust directions a bit to get optimum result. But still main roof antena reception is lot lot better.
Also, this USB TV stick came with small remote controller as well. Remote is not very powerful, but fun to use.
Regarding their TV software, they could make it bit better..

Summary: Good value for money and great fun.

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Installation:
Features: