Joined on 03/09/04
Not Entirely As Pictured
Pros: Extremely easy to install.
Cons: Just came in plastic "blister" pack. No driver disk or hold down screw. Needed network connection to install driver. Not a major deal.
Overall Review: Antennas would be a nice addition
Good Card... when it's working
Pros: Record 4 HD channels at once. Reasonable support. Ability to put more than one card in a PC for even more channels.
Cons: The unit gets warm, almost reaches Ceton's maximum recommended temp of 65C. You may need to look into external cooling. Random issues with tuners disappearing (possible card resetting) while watching TV. All of the sudden it will stop playback and blue screen (NOT BSOD) saying "viewing or listening conflict." Any recordings are immediately stopped and in a couple minutes the card begins working again. Had a problems with the card and had to RMA the cards 2 times so far. The first time the card would not get carrier lock and the second time the small coax connection broke.
Excellent
Pros: USB 3, Blu-Ray reader and writer, DVD reader and writer, bundled media software to watch movies. Unit feels solidly built.
Cons: Some laptops may require 2 usb ports for extra power.
Overall Review: I purchased this unit to be able to watch movies while traveling and it completely works as expected. I have yet to burn any discs using this product.
Avoid
Pros: 6 tuners in external enclosure, gigabit ethernet
Cons: No DLNA support. Constant problems "Service Unavailable", "Subscription Required" and "Tuner or Viewing Conflict" errors. About 5 to 20 seconds to change the channel.
Overall Review: I spent over 6 months fighting with the aforementioned error messages. I have opened may support tickets and played musical firmwares. It feels as though I payed a significant amount of money to beta test this product. This product was not worth the purchase price, it has cost me so much more in time troubleshooting the problems that eventually they blamed on the cable card. I swiftly got rid of this tuner but kept the cable card and it is running like a champ.
Stay Away!
Pros: Its cheap.
Cons: The ram is sold as 1066 but the SPD is programmed for 800. This ram is to be overclocked to run at 1066 not to run natively at 1066. Quote from a super moderator in their forums, "Base on compatibility issue. We usually write in the SPD of JEDEC standard content.Therefore, It always showed 5-5-5-16 unless manually setting in BIOS."