Review: MSI Mega Sky 580

Well-featured and easy-to-use TV tuner

MSI’s Mega Sky 580 has a two-tone body of glossy black and off-white pearlescent plastic.

Included with the tuner are a mini-remote control, a coaxial adapter and a simple 140mm aerial, with a magnetic base and a 1.9m cable with a standard co-axial connector.

Also included are a useful nylon carry pouch and a nylon cord loop that can be used to tie the USB stick and its protective cap together, to stop the cap getting lost.

MSI supplies Newsoft’s Presto PVR5 application with its tuner. Following installation, Presto should display the identity of the tuners plugged into the system’s USB ports in a dropdown menu box.

Usually there will only be one, the MSI Mega Sky 580, identified as ‘Digital TV USB Mini Receiver’.

With the tuner selected, the next step is to scan for channels. Once the scan is complete, the channel list is saved until you decide to re-scan. Unfortunately the MSI Mega Sky 580 proves to be one of the less sensitive tuners, and Presto PVR5 was unresponsive and unstable on our test system.

There’s a live update feature, but this requires providing an intrusive amount of personal information before it will grant access to any updates.

In normal use, Presto PVR5 displays as two panes; the view pane and a control-panel pane. The control panel displays time and device indicators, such as signal strength and volume level.

Along the bottom are the recorder ‘transport’ buttons and, to the left, buttons for volume level, program select, electronic programme guide (EPG), Teletext and subtitle on/off. Scheduled programme recording is done by selecting required programmes from the scanned EPG list.

The MSI Mega Sky 580 is the lowest-priced product reviewed in this group test and it offers a lot for your money. It’s a shame it is let down by the lack of signal sensitivity and instability in the Presto PVR5 software.

This article is part of a group test of miniature USB TV tuners. Others are:
Intro and Editor's choice
Freecom DVB-T USB Stick
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 900
KWorld DVBT-350U
MSI Mega Sky 580
Pinnacle PCTV USB Stick
Terratec CinergyT USB XS