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 bought this item because I really liked the price, it said it would work better with my graphics card, and it could do the same as any other tuner out there on the market. I had high hopes for it and when I received it, I was more than excited to get everything set up and started. The box was packed nicely and it came with everything in the description: the Tuner itself, a cable line connector, an antenna receiver, a composite video tip converter so you can plug like a DVR or cable box into it, a cap for the tuner, the CD with the software (if all else fails their website has the 32 and 64bit drivers available, never fear. I checked myself), and the instructions. The first two weeks I had it, it was awesome! I was able to record all my shows and it was an easy setup with Windows Media Center and life was just peachy. The tuner worked really well and didn't skip a beat or anything of the sort. But then towards the end of the second week, my shows that were recorded were all messed up and I was kind of confused. So I tested the cable line by putting it directly into the TV and it worked fine, picture was clear. When I plugged it back into the computer, the image was glitchy, there was no sound whatsoever, and it would crash on me. It was really frustrating. Then I decided to uninstall it and reinstall it and it worked for a couple of days, and then I had the same problem. I decided I am just going to return and get my money back. All in all, this is a great tuner when it works. I would not recommend this tuner. If you do buy just be cautious and watch its performance.

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.