Avertv Hybrid Volar Max

I was a little bit afraid to purchase a tv tuner in the first place because of the newness of windows 7 when I had purchased this product, but I read a couple of reviews that confirmed it worked, when other tuners have had no support. I am a cable subscriber and I can't think of a better and easier way to get my tv recorded than with the hybrid volar max. I'm not so sure about dish, but when contemplating switching, I called avertv and they say it works, you just have to get a thing to control the dish receiver. Too complicated to mess with. With my cable, It's super easy to setup, you just plug it into a cable line, and scan for channels in media center. I haven't used this with anything but media center and have no experience with avertv's included software, but for those who don't already have media center, here's some things to consider....Windows 7 uses a new tv recording format called wintv. It's just fine, for recording your stuff, and I like it, but if you don't already have windows 7, I highly recommend vista with media center. The windows 7 one looks fabulous and everything, but plugins are great, and windows 7 media center changed so much, that many of the plugins don't work anymore. There is one plug in, lifextender that takes out the commercials, only for vista and not planning on supporting 7 anytime soon, as well as a plugin called webguide that allows you to set tv recordings from another computer over the web, plus live tv, and recorded tv, streaming it from your computer at home, to your work computer to watch on lunch for example. Those are both things that I wish I could do, but it's too much of a hassle to downgrade to vista now.Overall, for the quality of the video and sound, I'm extremely satisfied. Media center records things automatically for me, and every week I can rest assured that the pair can get my favorite tv shows recorded and ready for me to watch when I'm home from work. It's a fabulous buy and hard to live without.A quick note too, this is used on my designated home theater pc. It's nothing special, just a smallish gateway core2quad with a big hard drive. It gets the job done great, and I like to watch tv through my computer, as it records whatever I'm watching temporarily so I can rewind and pause as I please. That function is really nice to have so I don't have to wait for a commercial break for a bathroom break or something.Hope this helps, and I recommend fully to buy the hybrid volar max, especially with cable. I'm really happy with it.

(Update January 30, 2012: there is a Windows Media Center-Only version of this product, which is identical to the unit described below, but comes without the packaged software, and is slightly cheaper. I acquired it recently, will post a review in its section, you can find it here: Avertv Hybrid Volar Max TV Tuner Kit for Windows MTVHVMXSK)Although I am returning this unit to Amazon, and replacing it with the Avertv MTVHBNOER Hybrid Nano Express (Retail), which uses the PC Express Card bus rather than USB, this is simply because on the Lenovo laptop I tried to use it with it just doesn't perform well enough on the USB bus. There are (you can read the manual before you buy at the Avermedia website) very specific performance requirements for this unit, and I would suggest that, if you are unsure of what your system can handle, you stick with those. HD TV with Dolby 5.1 audio needs a lot of horsepower.Let me take the opportunity to laud Amazon for its terrific customer service - when my order did not arrive even though the USPS said it did, I emailed customer service, and within an hour I received an email stating Amazon had put another unit on order, with two day UPS shipping at no charge. A followup email provided a no-charge mail link so I could return the other unit should it arrive. The second unit shipped that day. Impressive customer service, people.Having said that, I tried this tuner only under Windows 7, with the Windows Media Center that is packaged with that operating system. The software that comes with the unit works, I think it is intended for PCs that have no tuner software, but it does not work very well, and my suggestion is to use the Media Center, which, under Windows 7, runs this tuner like a native. You can find the drivers-only for the tuner as a separate download at the Avermedia website, and I would suggest you install those and try to run the Media Center first, you do not need to install the packaged software at all. Under Windows Vista and Windows 7, you see, a TV tuner is recognized by the operating system (that is part of the reason Microsoft has integrated the Windows Media Center in those versions of Windows), and handled as an integral part of your computer, it isn't an "alien" device, so to speak.Once the drivers are loaded (do this before plugging it in for the first time!), the Avermedia device is recognized and the Media Center will offer to have it detect and program all available broadcast channels - analog TV, digital TV, digital radio and FM radio. If your computer is set up to display HD TV (which normally requires an HDMI connector, and an HD flat panel TV set up to display at a 1920x1080 resolution at 30 or 60 Hz) you can watch and record HD TV "at full throttle", so to speak - please remember, most PCs do NOT provide that resolution natively, but need an external HD display for it! If connected via an HDMI cable, and with a Dolby decoder built into the TV, or connected through the TV, this unit will provide full spec HD. Pretty amazing.Other reviewers here have tried this unit with antennas - my reason for buying it is that I wanted to put a recording device on my Comcast cable feed. I do have a Tivo with a Cable Card, but when connecting a new flat screen to my home theatre setup, I noticed that Comcast pumps a complete unencrypted TV feed down the cable wire, apart from what it sends to the Cable Card the Tivo needs to function. I discovered this accidentally, they don't tell you there is a "standard" cable feed as well. It is worth checking out, mine has 180 channels, partly digital, some of which do not appear on the Cable Card.Doing specifically this, the Avermedia tuner picked up all available channels flawlessly, and Windows Media Center downloaded the entire programming schedule for it, once I had told it my location and cable system. This is, to me, the only way to use this tuner - the TV schedule Windows pulls down from the internet is free, you can see what is on, program detail, and you can check the schedule a week ahead of time and program anything you want to record (provided your PC is fast enough - recording HD television with Dolby 5.1 audio, both of which the tuner receives and makes available, requires a LOT of horsepower.But it is there, and if you want to play with TV, or if you want a cheap DVR/PVR, this unit works very well, and gives you all the advantages of a cable company DVR.

Save your self a headache, buy another TV tuner. I had an Aver cardbus tv tuner, that worked great; but since new notebooks lack cardbus slot I tried this USB tv tuner; but first i tried to install on win 7 professional.. radio worked, but when trying to use the TV tuner.. it crashed.. over and over again. So i tried on a XP notebook, and again crashed when trying to use the TV function. Other ugly thing is the software included, seems they tried to emulate a media center.. very ugly. I now have a cheap genius usb tv tunner (30$) that at least works, and includes a basic tv tuner software that gets the job done. Does not even worth a single star..bad..bad

This product works great with the supplied software and then that is it. I recorded multiple test shows changing the settings and none of them would play back in XPMCE or WMP with any sound. I use an extender so that makes the whole process pointless.