Diamond TVW750USB ATI Theater HD 750 USB TV Tuner

For the $35 I paid for this I was expecting to be disappointed - BUT I was pleasantly surprised. This is the 5th TV tuner that I've owned (all the others were from the brand that starts with an "H" - can't remember it off hand). Three were internal PC cards and one was a USB dongle. The previous USB dongle broke because It was attached to a stiff coax cable and the connection was poorly soldered. The diamond should not have this problem as it construction braces for this. I have Comcast cable and over the last few years most all analog channels are gone replaced with digital. The other tuners I still had would pickup digital over the air broadcasts but NOT unscrambled digital channels over cable like my digital TV(s) will do if I bypass the cable box. Since this was sold by Amazon if it didn't work I could easily return it so I gave it a shot. I does pickup all unscrambled digital stations just like my digital TV(s) do. It seems to work fine and I've had NO problems with it. It comes with it's own TV suite that works really well and also lets you record. I was also worried as I have a computer running Windows 8 - 64 bit but it had no problems with it EXCEPT for Windows 8 Media Center. Media Center NO longer comes standard with Windows 8! It is now a paid add-on for like $39. Those of us that went to Windows 8 in 2012 were given a code for a free copy of Media Center if you were lucky enough to see that online and apply for it early enough. Media Center sees the TV dongle but will NOT find any channels over a cable when scanning. I haven't tried media Center with it since 2012 so that may be fixed. Also when Media Center tries to access the Diamond dongle it screws it up somehow. The only fix it to unplug it and plug it back in. Then it will work fine again with Diamonds software. My solution was to just not use Media Center with it and everything is fine. Another real nice feature is that in addition to the coax in line they include a mini USB cable that has both RCA jacks & S-Video. Thus if you want to record from an old VCR or DVD player this works fine. $35 is a great price.

We gave up paid TV service for free over the air digital TV, but I missed my DVR. The Diamond Tuner comes with a tiny little antenna that suction cups to the window, or clips onto a table edge with the provided clip. This mini antenna picked up 10 channels, including some of my favorites. I will take this with me when I travel. The package includes a remote control that is so tiny, not much bigger than a credit card, but it works great. Very slick! Next I hooked the tuner up to my outdoor antenna on the roof with coax. The tuner comes with the adapter to hookup to coax. This gives me over 40 channels, including all of my favorites. At first I tried the software that came with it called TotalMedia 3.5. It was great, although a little quirky, but easy enough to use. I could watch and record live TV, including pause live TV. The pamphlet in English and French recommended Windows Media Center, which I had never tried. Windows Media Center turns out to be my dream TV software. It gets the entire TV schedule from the internet for free, and you can browse the showings and record one at a time if you only have one tuner installed. The interface is excellent, intuitive, fast, and powerful. I haven't explored any additional capabilities of this device, but what I bought it for, to watch and record TV, it more than exceeds my expectations. Also in the box is a USB extension cable, in case you want to keep the tuner on your desk and run the cable to a USB port on the back of your computer, and AV cables that port in S-Video, yellow jack video, and red and white sound into the tuner. There is also a disc that includes the driver, software and manual. I look forward to diving into the manual, but didn't need to even open it to get this far. I highly recommend this product.

I installed the tuner on a HPG62 laptop with an i3 processor and Windows 7 64bit OS. Windows immediately recognized the tuner and installed the drivers without giving me a chance to load drivers from the CD. I hooked it up to my Comcast cable with digital programming and used Microsoft Media Center to set up the channels. This all went well and the digital pictures were stable and very clear. Analog channels were interrupted every second or so by a skip. Very annoying. Also, the remote control does not work. It is outputting IR, but the tuner does not respond. I reloaded the drivers from the CD, but it did not help. Loading the included tuner software also did not help with the remote problem. I tried to call technical support, but no answer. Live chat is not available. I left a message, but no reply. I plan to return the item to Amazon. Update 5/20/2010 Amazon sent me a replacement unit. The new tuner had the same problem of not recognizing the remote from Microsoft Media Center. I have reintalled the drivers and downloaded the latest drivers from the [...] site, but still the remote does not work. I sent the replacement back and have ordered a Media Center remote. Hopefully this will resolve the problem. Update 5/26/2010 Got the new Media Center remote. It works fine and does not require any software installation for Win 7. I just got an update to the ATI drivers from Microsoft. The original remote still does not work.

very nice

splendid tv pictures but the arcsoft software that comes with it is too basic.

Incompatible

The day of high-end HDTV cards for PCs has long since died. There are very few PC manufacturers producing HDTV cards or USB sticks because there simply isn't a market for home-brewed media centre PCs. Diamond is one of the few manufacturers still building an HDTV card. I bought this USB stick to fiddle around with HDTV reception on my laptop. The device worked, but the software was rather sketchy. The unit itself also runs incredibly hot, which makes me think that it will not last for a long time. After playing with the device for a couple of weeks, I abandoned it in favour of simply sticking with streaming video services.

Works well with an antenna, has a more sensitive tuner than our TV. Good deal as I got it for a "used" price which was 1/6 of new item price.