I have been using my Desktop PC, Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid Tuner (330e) to watch TV with Tata Sky DTH. It is quite useful to catch up on News & happenings during the day and for a break a few episodes of 30 Rock/How I met your mother in late evenings. After working for a few years without any issues Pinnacle PCTV conked off this week. So I went around shopping for a replacement and settled with the AverTV Volar GO A833 USB drive. It has drivers for Windows 7 x64 and works fine.
The device is advertised to have support for Windows Media Center (to be used as the Player), but it turns out that works only for TV Cable as an input video source. In my case with Tata Sky DTH, the input video source was Composite and Windows Media Center requires you have an IR Blaster for it to work. AverTV Volar Go doesn’t ship with one, so I tried to use the IR Blaster from Pinnacle but it didn’t work. So I had to uninstall Windows Media Center and stick with the AVerTV 6 Player Application. The device comes with a small remote control that you can use to adjust volume control, ON/OFF the player and it works fine. The Player supports TimeShift & MP4 recording as well. Since there is no IR blaster I am not able to control the set-top-box from the TV Player application itself.
AVerTV Volar GO
I was going to purchase this but you saved my time and money by mentioning this does not work with Pinnacle IR blaster
@Satish Nair, I am not aware of Mac OS support as I don’t use Mac OS :-). Check on Aver TV Volar GO website whether they have a Mac driver for the Mac OS version you have got or write to their support to ensure it will work before you buy it. Good Luck.
Hi Venkat – Came across your blog while searching for a solution.
I have an iMAC and was suggested by tech distributors to go for AverTV Volar Go as the TV tuner to watch Tata sky channels.
Any idea on whether the above will work for my iMAC?
Look forward to hearing from you,
Regards
Satish Nair
@Venkat.KL, I was told IOMEGA and Western Digital have products that allow you give Audio/Video inputs (Composite) and then record them in a USB or built-in HDD into MP4 formats for later playback. Unfortunately I am not able to find any such product on the web. Will keep you posted if I find one.
Hi,
I am looking out for some software and / or hardware by which I can record any media(persisted for viewing the same in future) which is streamed from online or local or as you mentioned via TV.
Please let me know.
Regards,
Venkat.KL