AVerMedia’s twin HD TV tuner turns your PC into a set-top box

The increasing consumer desire to watch TV shows on demand, combined with the proliferation of home theater PCs (HTPC), has given rise to the AVerTVHD Duet – a pure HD Dual Digital TV tuner for your PC that lets you watch one show while recording another or record both simultaneously. And, by recording your HD content to your HTPC's hard drive, it becomes a personal video recorder (PVR): you can time-shift your favorite shows, skip annoying bits, pause and rewind, you know the drill …


Compatible with Windows 7, the manufacturer says this tuner will take your HTPC to improved levels of high definition digital entertainment by letting you record free-to-air HD TV and unencrypted digital cable (ClearQAM) content - but only up 1080i.

“If you have an available PCI-E slot, you can install a second tuner and record up to four different programs simultaneously, while viewing any of the four programs," said Dominic Wong, AverMedia’s Senior Technical Manager. That’s serious TV addiction.


On the odd chance that there are four things on TV at the same time that you want to watch, this is one way to do it. Just make sure you’ve got enough storage space on your PC to collect all that HD content.

The AVerTVHD Duet has a single input, which adopts the PCI Express interface, and offers a stable and higher bandwidth transmission environment than the traditional PCI bus.

There is also a picture-in-picture (PIP) function for those who are able to work and watch TV at the same time (there’s even a transparent PIP so you don’t cover anything on your desktop that you may be working on).

Digital Sound and Closed Caption are two other features available. In addition, with advanced H.264 recording compression technology, users can directly record TV shows into 320 x 240 resolution, upload and play them on an iPod/PSP or any other portable media player.
Specifications

* Watch live TV, record, pause, rewind, playback HDTV on your PC with Windows® XP, XP Media Center Edition 2005 or Windows Vista and Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit);
* Watch one HD program and record another, or record two different HD programs simultaneously;
* Uses Windows XP Media Center 2005, Vista Home Premium/Vista Ultimate;
* TV Recording Scheduler and Electronic Programming Guide;
* ATSC or Unencrypted ClearQAM Support (Digital Cable);
* High Definition support up to 1080i;
* PCI Express x1, Low Profile Form Factor;
* Input Signal: 75 Ohms TV Antenna Input;
* Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz with HT (Hyper-Threading) or Equivalent AMD processor;
* 128M VGA card with DirectX 9.0c or above;
* 512 MB RAM or above;
* PCI-Express x 1 slot;
* Sound card;
* Windows XP/XP MCE*/Vista/Vista MCE/Windows 7;
* 200MB hard disk free space;
* Installation CD (includes: application, drivers, quick guide and user manual);

*With Windows XP MCE 2005, an Analog TV Tuner & Certified MPEG-2 Decoder is required.

The AVerTVHD Duet retails for USD$89.99.