Watching television shows on your monitor, while (supposedly) working at your computer might seem like a frivolous hardware option, but there are many reasons why you should consider installing ADS Technologies Channel Surfer TV http://www.adstech.com inside your Windows-based computer.
It seems that almost every computer user has, at one time, wanted to capture a video image from a TV, VCR, or a video camera, and I've found that certain methods and devices do so better than others. Some capture-only cards, for example, produce still images that look like they were produced by a paint-by-number set with half its colors missing. Devices that plug into printer ports are a little better, but some lack image quality. Using hardware such as Channel Surfer TV, you can not only capture still images and video clips, but can watch television shows on your monitor.
Initially, the installation of the Channel Surfer TV card gave me fits. I soon discovered (real men don't need instruction manuals) that the video card in my computer needed to be on the list of compatible cards mentioned in the User's Guide. While only 30 cards are listed there, many more are mentioned on the company's Web site. After removing my incompatible card and installing an ATI 3D Expression video card I had lying around, I was up and running and ready to start channel surfing.
After installation, the next step is to scan for available channels and set preferences for each one. If you're connected to cable TV, this can take some time because of the large number of available channels. Each channel can have its own password for parental control, logo, and network name. Choosing a channel is done by clicking on Up or Down buttons or by selecting the Scan Channel button. I still haven't found a way to type in the channel number, which was the only failing that I discovered. Some of the controls on the many control bars include Closed Caption, Brightness and Contrast, and Hue and Color, along with a choice of resolutions. Graphics are all done in an attractive 3D-button style.
The highest frame-capture resolution option is 640-by-480, which produces acceptable results for the most likely applications that you'll have with the grabbed frames. The resulting images can be printed, edited, trashed, or saved. A built-in image editor called Pixel Pusher has a number of special effects and controls for manipulating captured pictures, a few of which are just for fun, such as Pinch and Mirror. Sound, as well as AVI files, can be saved directly to your hard disk. These files can be joined and manipulated using the Wave Splice and Video Splice software that's included. Not much instruction is provided in the user's guide for any of this software, but on-screen help files are plentiful.
The user's guide features step-by-step instructions and illustrations for installing the hardware. Newbies beware: Read it first. You are sure to have problems if you don't. Nevertheless, setup and operation of the ADS Technologies Channel Surfer TV was a fun project for a power user such as myself. At time of release, pricing was $229 for a model with FM radio capability.
Joe Farace
