Avermedia TV Box 9
I had to take time out from my busy presidential campaign to do a product review. I reviewed software once, but this is my first-ever hardware review so we'll have to see how this goes.
First of all I want to explain my need. I have just about always had a TV, DVD etc. in my bedroom but for recent developments around here, the roommate with the big TV setup left and the new roommate doesn't have jack because he just got out of a bad relationship and only has what would fit into the boot of his little car. So my entertainment stuff went to the living room and that's where I like it anyway when I live alone and can do what I want. However, since we don't always want to watch the same thing at the same time and I like to kick back to some TV before bed, I wanted a cheap way to have my cake and eat it too... I wanted to watch TV on my computer monitor, which is in my bedroom.
I wasn't even sure that such a thing as this existed and if it did exist I thought it would be a simple cable adapter of some kind. Well, research will teach you a lot in a short time if you put your elbows to the search engine and know where to look for reviews. It's a bit more than a cable adapter but that turned out to be a GOOD thing!
At first I tried eBay with some simple keywords along the line of, "TV Monitor LCD watch" which did get some results. From those I learned this device is called a TV Tuner. That seems like a good name for it. After some refined searches I was happy to find some that only cost about $20.
I am distrustful by nature and I hate to spend money on crappy shit from the south side of Asia that doesn't work. That meant I looked other places too. One of the BEST resources on earth for product reviews, aside from Consumer Reports, is Amazon. People who own things are motivated to write reviews usually because they LOVE something or because they HATE it. I don't see too much middle ground on Amazon and I can understand that. I only write about things that inflame my passions, whether in a positive or a negative way.
You might wonder what I think of the TV Box 9, but I'm getting to that. To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season....
More on my search. I wanted to learn as much as I could about these devices before my next payday. The $20 ones I found on eBay had model numbers which I sought out. Crap, junk, hate, bad picture, didn't work, paperweight... you get the idea. Alrighty, so I won't be spending $20. I wonder if there are any good ones or if this is just a flawed concept. Maybe TV signals are incompatible with monitors. Hmmm.
More looking on Amazon and I found one that had great reviews from almost everyone. The vast majority gave it 5 stars. A few gave it 3 or 2 but if you read them you see that these people wanted something else entirely, probably a TV card for their computers or else a nice big HD flat screen. They didn't really want the TV Box 9 for their purposes and bitched mainly about what it's NOT rather than what it is. Of the good reviews, a fair number praised the picture quality. We have to keep in mind that not all monitors are created equally and most of the reviews I read didn't say what resolution their monitors are, so here's your grain of salt. I compared it to the TV Box 7 which is a bit older and therefore cheaper, but there weren't as many raves about the picture. Furthermore, the TV Box 9 even states that image has been improved over past models.
I'm going to be across the room in bed looking over at my computer desk when I watch this thing, so picture quality is important. I'm not expecting HD but I'm also not willing to look at bollocks, get mad, and go watch TV in the living room.
So even though it's more than I imagined spending, it's still less than a new TV and once my TV rack is out of my room I'll have space to put my laundry basket back where it used to be. That's another benefit. So payday comes, I discover a $100 bonus and I feel even better about buying this because bonus money is like that, you want to buy a toy rather than do something sensible with it. (Never mind my economic stimlulus money.)
Once I decided on the model I wanted, I had to search and hunt and compare to get the best price. I found 7's on eBay but there are very few 9's. I found ONE but it was more expensive on eBay than at Tiger or Amazon! But anyway, my searching revealed the best price to be a used one on Amazon shops but I've had bad luck with used electronics. Like a toothbrush, you really want a new one. The best *new* price I found was on Tiger Direct.
[Fast forward... I've now had my TV Box 9 for a few months.]
I have to say that it has met or exceeded all my expectations. It works consistently. The picture is very watchable. If I were to post a review on Amazon, I'd have to give it 5 stars. You may have noticed what a cynical bastard I can be so it's really hard to shake 5 stars out of me.
The picture is good but not perfect. For 90% of TV it's fine and dandy. The only time you notice that you're NOT watching a TV is when you're looking at a darker screen. SG-1 is exploring a cave or Discovery is showing something about space... things like that. When the screen is mostly dark or black, you get some odd looking grey as if you're looking at a hologram from an accute angle. You can bob your head up and down and make the screen change. But really, that's the only thing I can find to complain about and I don't really even notice it anymore.
Features on the TV Box 9 were thought through pretty well. My favorite feature is PIP. It's not like the PIP you have on your DVD, though. In this case PIP means that I can shrink my TV screen down to the corner of my screen and work on my compluter while I watch the news or whatever. I'm doing that now. I'm watching History Channel while I write this. Pip has two settings. The first setting makes the TV screen smaller but it blocks whatever is behind it. That's alright sometimes but usually I have it in transparent mode, which means you CAN focus on the TV picture if you want to but you can see your icons and such BEHIND the picture as well. Sometimes I put the satellite on one of the Sirius channels (that's usually First Wave, in case you care) and make the pip transparent so I can just ignore it. There's not much to see unless I want to know what song I'm hearing. This is also a good feature for listening to news and I only look at the PIP occasionally when there's something to see. Since this image isn't put through the computer itself I can't screen-grab it for you but I'll take a couple pictures. I hear they're worth a thousand words.
There are 4 pictures here. The first is full-screen TV. The second is opaque PIP. The last two are transparent PIP; one with a black and white picture and one with color.
The '9 has enough inputs and outputs to handle most setups. Probably not a full-on rack system but you wouldn't be using a monitor for that anyway. I have a coaxial cable coming in from my satellite DVR in the other room and a small DVD player. I might eventually see if I can work in a PS2 or N64, which would work just fine but I might need to use a switch-box for multiple inputs. When I try that I'll edit in the results for you.
I'd feel remiss in my duties if I didn't find a couple annoyances, so here they are.
If you're going to place the unit on your desk between your computer and monitor, the cable included will be fine. Since I wanted mine on the bookcase on the OTHER side of my monitor (Computer on the left of the monitor, over to the TV Box on the right, and then back left to the monitor) I needed a longer cable. That's not a complaint, just something to think about as you position the unit.
The unit weighs almost nothing. It's not much more than a circuit board in a plastic shell. Because there are several cables hanging from it and most of them pull off to the side toward my monitor and computer, the weight of the cables makes it really difficult for the thing to sit up straight. At best it leans to the side and at worst it lays down flat. I have a solution to that, but it will be available on my Steampunk page later after I do some work on it.
There's something weird about the remote too. There are a LOT of buttons that don't do anything. Nothing. It's like this remote was made in a Remotes R' Us factory and then different manufacturers can stamp their logo on them and program them for whatever. It also has several functions that I rarely if ever use. You can switch the sound around from TV to PC if you need to hear what sounds your computer is making. There's a sleep timer so you can fall asleep watching TV and wake up to your screensaver the next morning. You can control channel and volume of course and you can switch through your input sources. I never change channels since I'm using a satellite receiver but if you're using a direct connecton to cable or rabbit ears it does all your channel tuning.
I don't know what will happen when we all switch over to an HD signal. I'm certain you'll need a converter to iron out your signal just like you would for any non-HD tv. No surprise there.
While my desktop PC has a pretty decent 19" monitor, I also have an older, cheaper, lower resolution monitor that I sometimes use with a laptop. I once tried it with the TV Box 9 and it did NOT work. Before you go buy one, check your monitor resolution to be sure it's high enough. This might be adjustable through the menu but I didn't really want to use that monitor so I didn't take the time to try it. On that note, if you're using a lower resolution monitor you might be very disappointed. I'll leave that up to you.
Since this is the only tv tuner I've ever tried I have no comparison to make. If you want to watch TV on a monitor, this is will make you happy. Buy with confidence.
If you're the kind of person who wants DETAILS and more DETAILS (that's me too), click this link and you can read the entire owner's manual.
Owner's Manual for TV Box 9 (PDF format)
Various pictures I found so you can see the box from all angles:
