In Use
On my Philips 18" LCD, the image quality produced by the Compro VideoMate Gold+ was superb considering it's only a comparatively low-res TV signal we're talking about here. Also, my rooftop aerial ain't the best, but nevertheless, the VideoMate card did well and picked up all major national free-to-air channels in New Zealand.
Editor's Note: Compared to my MSI PC Anywhere TV Tuner card, the Compro VideoMate Gold+ card is heaps, heaps better when it comes to picture quality. Software controls are easier to operate and the remote control is far superior against the MSI one. Note that the images below (only 6Kb each) and its corresponding bigger view (only 30Kb each) are even scaled down quite considerably to lower its size but still the images are very crisp.
*Click on the pictures for a bigger view.
The Compro PVR application is fairly simple to use, it's biggest fault being the limited editing ability for the channels that the auto-scan picks up. Even though you can weed out the weak and ghosted stations, you cannot reorder the sequence that the channels appear in.
I also noticed I couldn't pick up some of the regional stations that I can with a normal TV set. Off I went to the Web sites of the stations in question, to figure out what channels they're transmitting on. One is on VHF Band III, the other one UHF Channel 41. The Compro PVR application doesn't have VHF or UHF to choose from, only Cable and Antenna. The difference between the latter two isn't documented, unfortunately. Cable picks up more channels than Antenna, but at which frequencies and bands? Compro PVR only lists the channels, which will have different frequencies depending on the the country. Nor is there a manual way to enter the channel or frequency that you want. More work is needed in this area, in other words.
A "Channel Surf" mode gives you thumbnails of sixteen channels. They are updated one-by-one, but not in real time until you click on a thumbnail. Double-clicking brings up the channel in question in full-screen mode.
The Philips PC Text Pro application for viewing TeleText worked like a charm. TeleText or VideoText, is a primitive broadcast-only data transmission medium used mostly for news pages and programme listings; nevertheless, it's quite useful, despite the small amount of data that fits on each page. On TV sets TeleText is often slow to load pages due to the limited bandwidth of the medium. However, the Philips PC Text Pro application gets around that by prefetching up to 800 pages of TeleText, making flipping between them instantaneous.
Recording TV programmes was easy enough (just hit the red button in Compro PVR after you've set the desired quality). But, you can't record one channel and watch another which is a shame. However, I am yet to find a TV Tuner card that can do such a thing though. I guess a limitation on the current technology.
The FM tuner is straightforward to use.You can edit the channel listings, and enter frequencies manually but as with Compro PVR you can't record one channel and listen to another.
If you don't like Compro's applications for viewing TV and listening to FM radio, you are not stuck with them. Just look for other apps that support the Philips SAA7134 and/or the FM tuner chip. Linux support for the SAA7134 is available over at http://bytesex.org for instance.
Scheduling recording of programmes worked great -- the VideoMate provides everything relevant here, including automatic logon, settings for powering down or standing by the system, or just leaving running. You can create repeat schedules, pick the recording quality for each one, and tell VideoMate TV Gold+ to mute the speakers while recording. The latter is very handy when recording late night programmes, but of course, it can't do anything about typical PC noises like spinning fans and hard drive chattering.
Another feature that it quite handy is the ability to take snapshots of the current TV program you are watching. You can capture a scene and either view it, edit it (using your default photo editing software), save it or simply close it. You can also re-shoot to capture the real-time scene if you didn't like the one you have just captured on the snapshot window.
Conclusion
For the money -- RRP is US$69 or NZ$140 -- the Compro VideoMate TV Gold+ offers more features than most of the available TV and FM tuners cards currently available in the market here. The Power Up feature is indeed very handy and should keep the power rates down a bit especially if you are going out for a few days and can't afford to miss a fav TV program. Image quality is excellent and Compro has come up with a well-rounded package that should keep all but the most demanding users happy. This will certainly make your PC life more enjoyable and versatile.
