DViCO FusionHDTV5 USB Gold Hands-On Review

Anyone figure out how to make the remote work with BTV ?




I also noticed under START,PROGRAMS,and the fusion locaton,


choices are besides starting the program,


FUSION GOLD DRIVERS


FUSION LITE DRIVERS





This is after I installed the latest software from the DVIco site.


Confused about this. I thought the drivers would be installed


during the install " Everything seems to work but wonder


if I cam missing another part of the install??





digitalKen

I agree in not wasting time with an analog tuner. I think it's siilly that MCE would require a seperate tuner in order for an HD tuner to function correctly. That brings it to the 3rd party software. You indicated DVICO's software wasn't that stable. How does the VBOX or ONAIR Solutions software compare? Are they all just as unstable? Are there othe USB HD tuner options out there for laptops?

"Media Center Edition requires a separate analog TV tuner to be installed"

This is a limitation of MCE, not the Fusion tuner. It will apply to any digital tuner you are considering. The FAQ on Fusion's website also mentions this (see http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/Eng/Support/). A pretty lame design on MS's part if you ask me. I'm not interesting in wasting time or money on an analog tuner.





The good news is that the Fusion tuner has its own software that will be able to handle both analog and digital signals through the single tuner. I don't even bother running the MCE UI on my system anymore and just run the TV apps that came with my tuner cards. This has the added benifit of letting me utilize the QAM tuning capabilities of the Fusion card. The Fusion software allows me to watch unencrypted digital channels from my cable provider (comcast). Whereas the MCE interface would limit my digital tv selection to OTA.





The bad news is the Fusion tv software isn't terribly stable. But then I never found MCE to be very stable either. I've heard the Fusion USB version is more stable than the PCI version though so your mileage my very.





Cheers,


Lost Dog





OS: WinXP MCE2005


Case: SilverStone LC10M


Motherboard: DFI 915P-TAG


CPU: Intel P4 3.2GHz 640


Memory: 2x Kingston 512Mb PC3200 CL3


Tuner1: ATI HDTV-Wonder


Tuner2: DViCO Fusion5 Gold


Video: Sapphire X700 PRO 256MB


Monitor: Sony KDE-50XS955 50" Plasma

So I just bought a laptop with win MCE. I decided to not get the optional analog TV tuner/remote bc I wanted both analog and digital tunes. Did some digging around and found the OnAir unit and Fusion HDTV5. Fusion claims to work with MCE while OnAir does not. Have read a lot of great reviews about the VBox, but it is ATSC only. So was leaning towards getting the DVICO when I went to the PC Alchemy.com web site and it has the following comment on the DVICO page. "NOTE: Windows® XP Media Center Edition requires a separate analog TV tuner to be installed in addition to the FusionHDTV5 USB Gold. Only Over the Air (OTA) HDTV is supported by Windows XP Media Center Edition." This confuses me. Theirs is the ONLY web site that has this. I thought the thing about DVICO is it had both tuners in it. Reviews on the VBox seem good but most say you need a powered USB hub. I can't find anything about the VBox remote and if it's MCE compatible. I've read the DVICO is not. Can I plug the DVICO right into my MCE laptop and have success? Thoughts anyone?

New dual tuner model (not for US ?)




http://www.fusionhdtv.co.kr/ENG/Pro...ualDigital.aspx

Damn, that's what I thought. Maybe we can set up a regular USB hardware encoder for analog like the Plextor ConvertX TV-402U.

If you're on a Pentium III, you may not have USB2.0 ports on the system. Even if you installed USB2.0 ports, the specs you listed are pretty much bare minimum for the DViCO to work. It may install and run, but you probably won't get the performance you're expecting.

My brother and I are thinking about getting one of these for our parents for Christmas, but the computer at home that it'd be hooked up to is a 1Ghz Pentium III with a Geforce4 128MB graphics card and 512MB of RAM. Yeah, I know the processor is old.... what do you think the chances are that this USB version will be functional that computer?

LostDog said: I've been using the PCI version for a couple months now. When I first installed, it did not pick up any of the unecrypted cable channels. This was very disappointing because I know I have plenty. My CableCard ready Sony TV recieves tons of unencrypted digital channels, including all the local HD channels and even the audio-only cable music channels.




Recently, DViCO posted a new software release and I just tried that out the other day. Much better. It now finds over 300 digital channels from my cable provider. There are still two major problems:





1. it doesn't find all the channels. i'm still missing some of the local HD channels that my Sony TV picks up from the same cable source.


2. it doesn't allow me to rename or provide aliases to the channels. with over 300 channels listed it is a bit tough to browse through and keep track of things like FOX-HD is 811.





Because of these two drawbacks, I went back to using it with my antenna. I just have the cheap little indoor antenna that came with my ATI HD tuner. This seems to work very well. I get about a dozen OTA HD channels including the major networks, all with a single antenna position. This is much better than the ATI HD tuner, which can only recieve about one channel at a time. With the ATI tuner, I have to adjust the antenna any time I want a different channel and even then it isn't very reliable.





Bottom line: very disappointing at first. major improvements with recent software upgrade. hoping the next release will get it to where it needs to be.

I believe the PCI version has trouble doing some QAM decoding. Whereas the USB version should have greater compatability. I learned this while doing some research several months ago.





Zach

My cable provider is Comcast. The funny thing is while the premium channels are encrypted, much of the on-demand programming is not. So there's a range of digital channels that are blank most of the time but occasionally I pick up the on-demand stuff that someone else in my neighborhood is watching. Kind of cool but also frustrating since the program might just go blank in the middle of a movie. I guess whoever order the on-demand decided to stop watching. Also, if they fast-forward, pause, or rewind, it all shows up on my TV.




What I really need is the cable tuner from my Sony TV in a PCI form. This TV has great reception both OTA and unencrypted QAM. The built in Sony tuner puts both my ATI and DViCO tuners to shame, with both OTA antenna signals and cable. I wonder if the tuner in Sony's set-top HDTV DVRs have the same quality as the tuner in this TV? In general, I'm not a Sony fan, with their proprietary ways (my TV has a MemoryStick slot too) and rootkit fiasco, but I can only say good things about the tuner in this TV.





I've also been wanting to try out the MyHD PCI HDTV tuner card. AFAIK, it is the only other card besides the DViCO that claims to handle unencrypted QAM (digital cable). It is a bit more pricey though, and I'm low on PCI slots.





Cheers,


Lost Dog





OS: WinXP MCE2005


Case: SilverStone LC10M


Motherboard: DFI 915P-TAG


CPU: Intel P4 3.2GHz 640


Memory: 2x Kingston 512Mb PC3200 CL3


Tuner1: ATI HDTV-Wonder


Tuner2: DViCO Fusion5 Gold


Video: Sapphire X700 PRO 256MB


Monitor: Sony KDE-50XS955 50" Plasma

Good comments, LostDog. Which cable provider are you using? Are you able to get 300 channels just using basic cable?

I've been using the PCI version for a couple months now. When I first installed, it did not pick up any of the unecrypted cable channels. This was very disappointing because I know I have plenty. My CableCard ready Sony TV recieves tons of unencrypted digital channels, including all the local HD channels and even the audio-only cable music channels.




Recently, DViCO posted a new software release and I just tried that out the other day. Much better. It now finds over 300 digital channels from my cable provider. There are still two major problems:





1. it doesn't find all the channels. i'm still missing some of the local HD channels that my Sony TV picks up from the same cable source.


2. it doesn't allow me to rename or provide aliases to the channels. with over 300 channels listed it is a bit tough to browse through and keep track of things like FOX-HD is 811.





Because of these two drawbacks, I went back to using it with my antenna. I just have the cheap little indoor antenna that came with my ATI HD tuner. This seems to work very well. I get about a dozen OTA HD channels including the major networks, all with a single antenna position. This is much better than the ATI HD tuner, which can only recieve about one channel at a time. With the ATI tuner, I have to adjust the antenna any time I want a different channel and even then it isn't very reliable.





Bottom line: very disappointing at first. major improvements with recent software upgrade. hoping the next release will get it to where it needs to be.

lennonb - I don't have the unencrypted HD signals, unfortunately, so I wasn't able to test it. You may want to check out http://www.hdtvpub.com/ to see if you have OTA signals in your area.

Hi,




I was wondering if you were able to hook it up to cable (I have comcast) and get any unencrypted HD signals from it. Comcast has HD in my area, but I would prefer to use my XP MCE box instead of the Comcast STB. I may be able to get OTA signals, but have nothing resembling an antenna and don't know what I can or can't receive.





Thanks,





Brian

I'm sorry the article wasn't clearer - the antenna used was the one bundled with the receiver when purchased from Snapstream. It is a Philips, I believe, and is very similar to (if not the same) antenna used by the ATI HDTV Wonder.

David Walker said: Like many of you, when I saw our recent post about the FusionHDTV5 USB Gold HDTV External tuner, I was extremely interested. Owning a Media Center 2005 PC and a Plasma HDTV, it seemed only right that I jump in and give the DViCO a test run and report back to our faithful readers. Let me say this; I'm extremely glad I did and I think you'll want to get a hold of one as well after reading this review.




Given that CableCARD technology is still, at best, a late 2006 option for Media Center owners (if even for MCE2005 at all), the only option currently available is from Over the Air HD (ATSC) signals or cable provided QAM, which I don't currently have in my area. However, having previously owned the ATI HDTV Wonder PCI card, I knew that I could receive ATSC broadcasts for most of the major networks, and with the new season of "24" on the horizon, I had to have HD again. I did have one prerequisite this time: the HDTV adapter had to be external as I wanted to use it on my laptop whenever I traveled. The FusionHDTV5 Gold fit that billing.





The FusionHDTV5 comes in a rather plain whitebox and includes the following: the FusionHDTV5 box, a slim infared remote control, an external adapter for composite and S-Video inputs (no component video), a standard USB to mini-USB cable, a CD with drivers and software, and a small screw-on antenna. I purchased the device from Snapstream because it included an indoor antenna with the package. The FusionHDTV5 is much smaller than you'd imagine and the remote is almost smaller than my cellphone. The buttons on the remote are adequate, but nothing special. The included antenna is quite pathetic and isn't worth including with the package. DViCO would be better off just leaving it out.





I decided that two different installations were in order: one on my Media Center PC and another on my XP Pro Home PC. Let's start with the Media Center installation. The driver installation was mostly painless, but did have one glaring flaw: you are prompted on whether or not you want to install the included MPEG2 decoder. Consider yourself forewarned: if you are running Media Center, do NOT install the included decoder as it is not MCE compatible. Installing it will cause you some unnecessary headaches. The documentation did not note this and somewhat less experienced users will find themselves extremely frustrated if they install the DViCO MPEG2 decoder. Luckily, Microsoft provides a utility that will allow you to straighten this out. My recommendation: if you can currently view DVDs from your PC, then do not install this decoder. The Windows XP install went better, having learned from the Media Center fiasco.





On the XP machine, the included software does a decent job of turning your PC into an HDTV set, but is nothing to write home about. The included conversion software (which is updated to support Xvid on the DViCO website) did a good job of converting my recording of "Seinfeld." The performance seemed decent, although somewhat slower than other utilities I use on my XP machine.





Media Center 2005 recognized the device without any problems and setup was easy. I had the DViCO up and running on MCE2005 in less than 5 minutes - including the station signal scanning. Overall, the signal strength was impressive. In comparison to the ATI HDTV Wonder, the DViCO picked up a few more stations and got full strength signals on several of them, including ABC. The big test of the night was to record my Atlanta Falcons on Monday Night Football. The result was astounding. My wife, who could care less about technology and even less about football, was floored when saw the picture on the screen. For the first time ever (and this is no joke), she sat down with me to watch football because of the picture alone. I don't think I can watch another game in standard resolution anymore - HD is just too much of an improvement. Additionally, the recording only had a couple of drop-outs that lasted less than a couple of seconds. The FusionHDTV5 recorded 3 hours worth of the game and rarely skipped a beat, which is more than I could ever say about ATI's HDTV offering. The quality was incredible.





The bottom line is this: if you have an HDTV set and a XP or Media Center PC attached to it, you owe it to yourself to get the FusionHDTV5 USB Gold. The signal strength was impressive, the setup was mostly painless and the device is compact and easily transportable. And for only $149, it is one of the least expensive external HDTV options currently available.





Disclaimer: Neither eHomeUpgrade, Snapstream or DViCO had any involvement with this review. The reviewed unit was purchased with my own money and of my own volition. This review is done solely to provide our readers with a first-hand account of this product.

What antenna source did you use for this test ?


If Quote: The included antenna is quite pathetic and isn't worth including with the package. DViCO would be better off just leaving it out.

Thanks for the great review. I hope SageTV supports it soon.




Zach