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Installation/Usage
The "installation" processes is little more than plugging in a few wires. It's truly "plug-and-play," at least, in theory. I had one little problem where I couldn't get sound, but I changed one setting, and that fixed everything (which, surprisingly, I can change back, and it does not cause the unit to stop outputting sound, so perhaps it was a fluke).
To hook it up to your computer, plug in power, the video input (whether that be cable, antenna, etc), the monitor, and speakers, and you are set. Power on the unit, and literally, there is nothing more that needs to be done. The setup is (slightly) more complicated if there are several devices (such as a Nintendo, or the like), or if the TV Box is to be setup in conjunction with a computer. If it is the latter, then the VGA pass-through cable is needed (if a Mac user is to do this, they may need an adapter), and have the audio pass through to the line-in of the soundcard. Despite having a stereo audio output cable being provided, I found that it worked better merely to have a dual 1/8th inch jack plug into the speaker output of the TV Box, and into the line-in on the soundcard instead (I had better sound quality, for whatever reason).
The "Picture-in-picture" features, which allows ¼ of the screen to be seen as a close-up of the action, wasn't working, for whatever reason. Not that this mattered much, to me, at least, because I don't particularly care enough to zoom in.
As for the quality, I would say that, in terms of TV, Nintendo, VCR, etc, it was approximately that of the ATI TV Wonder VE that I currently have, if not slightly superior. However, when it comes to the quality during normal computer use, I was highly disappointed.
In order to get the signal from the computer to the screen, it must first pass through the TV Box itself. This is somewhat analogous to how the pass-through cable system of the Voodoo2's of several years ago. The distortion to 2d quality was somewhat similar too, though in this case, it was worse. Though I wrote this review with the TV Box installed, it was by no means a fun experience. I may be one of the few who runs their monitor at 1280 * 1024, especially on a 17-inch monitor; at such a resolution, any blurriness of text is readily apparent, and in this case, the quality of my Radeon dropped dramatically (in the sense that the picture was noticeably blurred). It is similar to a "ghosting," in the sense that, where there are lines with a solid-color border, a faint, but noticeable, "ghosting" image occurs. As one who has to do a great deal of coding on his computer, I found this to be highly irritating. I only wrote this review with the unit still attached because I wanted to make sure that I really disliked it this much, and that it was, infact, as irritating as I had at first thought. I dropped the resolution, which mitigated some of the effects, but they were still noticeable. The lack of ability to go above 75Hz also does not help those who spend a great deal of time in front of their monitors (though admittedly this does not bother me, I know many for whom 75Hz is the bare minimum).
As for how to control the source of input that, is done by remote, as are the rest of the options such as color, brightness sleep timer, etc. This too was rather easy, however the thing that hindered its use the most was the very slow speed with which the TV Box responds to the press of a button in this mode. There were 5 "tabs" so to speak, each containing different options; the process of switching between these "tabs" was painfully slow.
Despite its size, the TV Box is actually noisy. When turned on, and viewing TV, if it weren't for my computer (or the sound of the TV, for that matter), I could readily hear the constant hum of the unit. While I have my computer on, this is of no concern, but it was noticeable, and irritating.
>> Pros & Cons/Conclusion
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