VideoMate DVB-U2200 - A HDTV DVB-T USB Tuner

[Filip Norrgard]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.comprousa.com/New/en/product/vmu2200.html' target='_blank'>http://www.comprousa.com/New/en/product/vmu2200.html</a><br /><br /></div>According to Akihabara, a Taiwanese company called COMPRO introduced at Computex the VideoMate DVB-U2200 which is a USB 2.0 digital TV tuner. The tuner features:<li>DVB-T digital terrestrial television and radio stations reception <br /><li>Watch TV on your PC laptop or desktop with high-speed USB 2.0 connection <br /><li>Supports digital FM radio reception (not DAB type) <br /><li>Supports Teletext and EPG (where available) <br /><li>Supports 1080i HDTV and 16:9 wide-screen formats (where available) <br /><li>Supports all DVB-T audio formats and Australia HDTV audio formats <br /><li>High-quality MPEG-2 recording, timeshifting, and channel surfing <br /><li>Multiple still frame captures and remote control snapshot <br /><li>USB bus powered, no external power adaptor required<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/VideoMateU2200.jpg" /><br /><br />Since there aren't much HDTV broadcasts over terrestrial in Europe yet, it it hard to see a big demand for this thing just yet. But, I expect things to change when the analog terrestrial broadcasts in Europe are turned off and leave more bandwidth for HDTV. So I hope this box will arrive in time to Europe for the analog switch-offs and the arrival of (true) HDTV.<br /><br />Has anyone in Australia managed to see/hear what the price tag will possibly be on this digital TV box? Maybe even had the luck to see it in action? ;)

[jizmo]

Yeah, I would love to see Finnish broadcasters being able to offer us HDTV even at half decent bitrate when they can't even keep up with the bitrates for the normal digital TV. :roll:

/jizmo

[Filip Norrgard]

Yeah, I would love to see Finnish broadcasters being able to offer us HDTV even at half decent bitrate when they can't even keep up with the bitrates for the normal digital TV. :roll:
I've been getting a decent digital TV reception at least via cable and more than good enough picture. On the otherhand, many terrestrial transmitters in Finland aren't broadcasting at their best potential, for some strange reason, and that might be a reason for the bad reception that many have experienced via terrestrial. :?

Which DVB type are you using: cable or terrestrial?

[jizmo]

Which DVB type are you using: cable or terrestrial?

Cable, which is supposedly better than terrestrial, but, heck, I can't tell the difference. It's ok for the bedrooms 21", but not the livingrooms 32", it looks mostly like badly encoded divx.

That's why most big-screen sports and movie fans in here in Finland go for digital satellite instead - as you may know - which is really much nearer to DVD-quality.

/jizmo

[Filip Norrgard]

Cable, which is supposedly better than terrestrial, but, heck, I can't tell the difference. It's ok for the bedrooms 21", but not the livingrooms 32", it looks mostly like badly encoded divx.
I've been running digital TV in full screen on my PC (when my PC is runnable) at 1024x768 and I haven't noticed any MPEG2 decoding artifacts much, but that is because the DVB-C card I have been using has got a hardware MPEG2 decoder I suppose. (Sidenote: I don't know which resolution our DVB broadcasts are in, but I think a bird whispered somewhere that it is just above the standard PAL resolution for the moment - around 800x600)

Most digital TV boxes out here aren't designed for big TVs (which is sizes above 25-inches I heard). I.e. the boxes decode at a predetermined resolution and we can then see it as a crappy TV image on those bigger TVs.

That's why most big-screen sports and movie fans in here in Finland go for digital satellite instead - as you may know - which is really much nearer to DVD-quality.
Oh really? I though it was because the rights to TV broadcasts of Finnish icehockey league (SM-liiga) were bought up by Canal + satellite broadcaster. ;)

Nah, seriously, I think you are right. Pure, high def sports freaks (or, those who got the money to buy the stuff) are those who go directly for satellite digital TV. Soon, though, they will have to switch to a newer box to watch the DVB-S version 2 HD broadcasts. DVB-S2 looks to be using MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2 which I think will be interesting.

As for what I'll do, is wait for those energy efficient (and hopefully less heat emitting) OLED TVs to come here and DVB 2 spec to be put in use before throwing any money in the general direction of the home electronics store. :D