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USB stick delivers MPEG soup!
This tiny stick contains 67 channels!
I picked up this little doozy for a mere £19.57 (plus shipping) at SVP. It’s a Freecom DVB-T USB Stick, and it is in fact a miniature digital terrestrial TV and radio receiver that plugs directly into your computer. This, in conjunction with the bundled software, provides a very convenient way to watch and record TV shows. It comes with its own mini-antenna, but it turns out to be little more than a glorified fridge magnet (it wasn’t managing to pick up any channels), so I ended up connecting it directly to our roof antenna, which has a decidedly strong signal (all six signal bars are lit up in the software).
The TotalMedia software, as it happens, isn’t the most brilliant piece of engineering. It has a lot of niggles, and switching between channels is a little on the sluggish side, but it’s nicely laid out and easy to use. The MPEG2 files it saves are also pretty reasonably sized (approximately 1.2 GB for an hours’ worth of poorly-shot shakycam, at the lowest compression settings) and there doesn’t seem to be any noticeable degradation in quality, with the end results looking noticeably better than the dedicated DVD recorder my parents have… not that the quality of British digital TV is any great shakes in that department anyway. For £20, it strikes me as being a really good deal.
Oh yeah, and I now have a job. I don’t have a concrete starting date yet, but, after several months on the proverbial dole, my days of scrounging are finally about to come to an end!
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Posted: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 at 9:29 PM
| Comments: 5
Categories: TV
| Technology
Comments
1.
Posted by: Baron Scarpia, March 7, 2007 11:41 PM
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More info soon, hopefully. Posted by: Whiggles, March 7, 2007 11:44 PM
3.
Congratulations on the job front Michael. If you don't mind me asking is it full-time or part-time and do you have far to travel. Basically, I need to know posts will still be regular ha! ha!
By the way regarding this bit of kit. Sorry to be a total idiot but how does it work exactly? I mean what channels can you pick up or is it dependent on if you have Sky etc? Also what are the options regarding connecting up the antenna? Would I need to get my ladder out and journey up to the roof or can the antenna be connected to a cable in different room to my PC? Finally, how does the software actually record and save the television signal and can this then be 'burnt' onto a DVD with results comparable to recording Sky digital broadcasts with my DVD recorder?
The reason being at present I have Sky Plus and record onto the hard drive in the box and then put the programmes onto DVD with a rather naff DVD recorder. It is likely I am going to scrap the lot in the future to cut down on my outgoings. To this end this TV gadget might just be the answer.
Any further info much appreciated. Posted by: Count Fosco, March 8, 2007 12:01 AM
4.
Hi Lee!
The job will be full-time, but hopefully it won’t mean I end up posting less - just that posts will probably be more concentrated around evenings and weekends… and lunch breaks, if I’m lucky. As for travel, it’s pretty straightforward. There’s a railway station a three-minute walk from the place, although it will mean changing trains half-way there.
As for the TV stick, it can only pick up signals sent by antenna - so basically the five analogue terrestrial channels, or digital Freeview (the five “standard” channels plus a bunch of others and several radio stations). In other words, I’m afraid you would be able to use it with Sky. Basically, you simply connect the stick to the antenna cable that would normally go into the back of your TV - no need to climb up on the roof! The software saves in .MPG format, which means you can’t just dump it straight on to DVD, but the conversion process is reasonably straightforward. Posted by: Whiggles, March 8, 2007 10:23 AM
5.
Sounds like a great piece of kit!
And congratulations on the job. I hope you find it to your liking. I've not been having much luck myself in finding one, but have been using my time to finally learn to drive (I'd put it off for years), and managed to pass my test last week! Posted by: colinr, March 8, 2007 2:20 PM
Comments on this entry and all entries up to and including June 31st 2009 have been closed. The discussion continues on the new Land of Whimsy blog:
http://www.landofwhimsy.com
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