Compro Videomate TV tuner

No different from the other TV tuners available, this one comes with a few enhancements here and there.

For one, FM channel fans may have a field day as this card interestingly has an in built FM tuner. The FM tuner works in the same manner as the TV tuner. It automatically scans and stores all channels, and can even record the music being played. We were not too impressed with the scanning abilities as it scanned a lot of junk channels too. The music can be recorded in WAV, MP3 and WMA formats. While recording in .wma, you can choose different encoding rates, and also choose between constant or variable bit rates. It doesn't offer the same facilities for MP3 recording though.

Moving to TV, the card's TV and FM tuner share the same interface and scanning abilities. Here, also its scanning abilities did not appeal to us as it scanned multiple channels falling in the same frequency range. But the TV tuner offers some more options. It has a cool feature of channel surfing that allows the user to tile multiple channels on the screen, and select the one he wants to watch.

The card can encode in MPEG1 and MPEG2 formats from the incoming TV signal. We tested it by encoding a TV program for 15 mins. This was done very smoothly and without any frame drops. These encoding can also be scheduled using an in built comprehensive scheduler. The scheduler allows the person to record his/her favorite programs weekly or monthly at a particular time. It can also shut down the PC after the recording is done. The card can also encode from other devices using S-video and Composite video inputs.

There is a feature called time shift that allows you to buffer the program you would want to watch later and not at the time its being telecasted. So when you watch the buffered program, you can skip ads etc. The card comes with a couple of bundled Ulead products for editing video and authoring DVDs, along with a DVD player software. 

At around 5K, it is a good investment for a home user, enabling him to watch TV and listen to radio on the PC itself. With the few encoding options available, you can encode movies from analog video cameras as well.

Geetaj Channana