Review: Kworld DVB-T PE310 TV tuner

A PCI Express tuner with dual analogue, dual digital or a bit of both

The Kworld DVB-T PE310 stands out from the crowd thanks to its use of a PCI Express interface but the real novelty lies inside the dual tuners; each tuner can be designated as either an analogue tuner or a digital tuner.

The key components are the Philips SAA7162 PCI Express chip and a pair of Philips TDA10046A video decoder chips which allow the PE310 to have dual analogue tuners, dual digital or one of each.

Installation of the card is simple enough, provided you have a free PCI Express slot. There are two RF connections, a mini jack for the remote receiver and an S-video socket which accepts an adapter cable that carries S-Video, composite and RCA audio connections.

The sticking point for us was the Hyper Media II software - it’s not the most polished package that we’ve ever seen and you don’t get a manual to help make things clear. Once you work out that the TV icon is the central control in the interface you can select either port one or port two and then designate it for analogue TV, digital TV or FM radio. You can change this setting at any time.

Once you’ve designated the function of one or both tuners you scan for channels, which is a quick process. Once this process completed, we found that the Hyper Media II software continued to make the job more difficult than we would like.

For instance, there’s a preview feature that is meant to show you a thumbnail of each channel to make your viewing simple, but instead the screen looked more like The Million Dollar Homepage; far too busy and unclear.

When you finally get to watch some TV you’ll be happy with the quality of the picture but once again the software lets the side down when you use features such as time-shifting. Other companies – Pinnacle springs to mind – do the job far better.

This is a superb piece of hardware and if Kworld buffs up its software we are confident that the DVB-T PE310 will become an excellent product.

Also consider:
Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS
Dual-format with an A/V breakout and the software includes a DVD burner

Avermedia AverTV DVB-T Volar USB TV tuner
Cheap, easy to set up and you'll get a good picture if you have decent reception in your area

Compro Videomate U500 USB DVB-T Stick
An average tuner that, like the Kworld, is let down by poor software

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