AVerMedia UltraTV USB 300

AVerMedia UltraTV USB 300
This small, lightweight USB tuner is best suited for helping you watch TV while traveling with a laptop.
Full Review

AVerMedia's $99 UltraTV USB 300 was born to hit the road. Including its cables, it weighs just 6 ounces and is slightly larger than a deck of cards. Because it draws power from a USB port, you don't need to carry an external power supply. The tuner comes with a faux-leather carrying case, too. Clearly, fitting the device and its cables into a laptop bag won't take much thought. One drawback, however: It has no remote control.

The UltraTV software keeps things simple. Though you can deck it out with a fairly large control panel (complete with a clock and an on-screen keypad for entering channels), a single mouse click strips it down to the bare essentials--the TV image with a narrow strip on the bottom containing channel and volume controls. That doesn't hamper the tuner's usability, though: You can access most of the commands by right-clicking the window.

The software's picture-in-picture feature lets you watch recorded files and live TV at the same time, though you can't watch two channels of live TV simultaneously. The TitanTV electronic program guide integrates with the software so you can use the EPG to schedule recordings.

Changing channels with the UltraTV USB 300 is nearly instantaneous. Unfortunately, time-shifting at a resolution of 720 by 480 resulted in jerky video when viewed at high quality settings--though recorded files were not affected and played smoothly.

The UltraTV USB 300 comes with Ulead VideoStudio 7 SE and DVD MovieFactory 2 SE; both programs are pared-down versions of outdated software, but they're good enough to handle editing your favorite recordings and burning them to DVD or CD.

Upshot: : If you want TV on your notebook PC, this small USB tuner makes a good travel companion--as long as you can live without a remote control.

-- Emru Townsend

Photograph by: Rick Rizner

Test Report

Street price when ranked					$99 (11/19/04)
Performance: Setup and ease of use					Very Good
	Play and record				Good
	Time shifting				Good
Features: Remote control					None
	FM tuner				None
	Electronic program guide				TitanTV
	Video formats				AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2
	Encoding type				Software-based
	Software				AVerMedia UltraTV, Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 SE and VideoStudio 7 SE
	Other features				Picture-in-picture (limited to one TV channel and recorded video; can't display two live TV signals at once)