TweakTown has published a review of two digital tuner products from Compro – the VideoMate T100 Digital and the VideoMate U500 DVB-T stick. Both of these tuners are designed for DVB-T transmissions so they’re not meant for people here in the US but definitely in other parts of the world where DVB-T is the prevalent standard.

Here are the major features of the VideoMate T100:

  • Watch Free-to-Air DVB-T digital TV shows on your PC
  • Silicon digital TV tuner with Philips 9-bit ADC chip
    Supports SDTV and 1080i HDTV (where available)
  • Advanced PIP/POP features up to 4 sub channels watching
  • Video Desktop to setup the live TV screen as wallpaper
  • Customize Brightness, Hue, Saturation, Contrast, and audio selection in each TV channel
  • Digital TV supports MPEG-2 and Transport Stream recording/playback
  • Capture analog video from S-Video to digital files
  • Analog video capture supports MPEG-1/2/4 formats recording
  • Analog video capture supports pause while recording and automatic spilt file size
  • Timeshifting, channel surfing, and still frame capture
  • Supports audio and language selection in available channels
  • Supports EPG, subtitle and Teletext (where available)
  • Fully functional IR remote control for TV and DVD playback
  • Microsoft BDA driver

The major features of the U500 include:

  • Thumb size USB 2.0 DVB-T Stick with remote
  • High speed diversity signal receiving capacity, even while you are on the move!
  • Watch digital TV on your laptop or desktop PC with high-speed USB 2.0 port connection (USB 2.0 only)
  • Special designed snake pipe USB extension cable
  • USB bus powered, no any external power required
  • Free-to-air digital terrestrial TV reception
  • Support SDTV and 1080i HDTV (where available)
  • Support EPG, subtitle, and Teletext (where available)
  • Advanced PIP/POP feature can open up to 4 TV channel windows watch and also watch live TV, playback recorded video files at the same time
  • Video Desktop to setup the live TV screen as wallpaper
  • Customize Brightness, Hue, Saturation, Contrast, Sharpness, and audio selection in each TV channel
  • Timeshifting, Channel Surfing and Still Frame Capture
  • Straight-to-Disc direct TV recording to DVD discs
  • Support digital radio reception (not DAB type)
  • Support all DVB-T audio formats
  • Autoscan in UHF/VHF band (6,7,8 MHz channels)
  • High-quality MPEG-2 formats digital TV recording
  • Support Transport Stream record and playback
  • Fully functional IR remote control for TV & DVD
  • Microsoft BDA driver
  • Microsoft MCE2005 compatible

Here are the verdicts on the two tuners from TweakTown:

Both the units performed OK – nothing particularly spectacular. The U500 certainly performed better than the T100, so it gets the nod for consistent and clear playback (with all the warnings and caveats about using the mobile antenna).

They gave the T100 a 5 out of 10 (ouch) and the U500 a 7 out of 10.

[Check it out via KrunkerHome]

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