The MediaMate 200 TV Box from S-Media is an external TV tuner for your PC. As well as a standard coax socket, the unit has S-Video and composite inputs, and connects to the PC via USB 2.0/1.x interface. The device performs all MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 encoding on-board, freeing up precious CPU cycles for other functions.
The bundled software allows simple channel management, the ability to schedule recordings, and time-shift capabilities. You can also capture stills, set the aspect ratio and adjust the bit rate, up to a maximum 15Mb/s. The interface is reasonably straightforward, which is handy, as the user manual is somewhat bereft of meaningful instruction.
Picture quality is average after maxing out the bit rate, and changing the settings to ‘DVD Format’. We found that simply viewing television/video the frame rate was smooth and synchronised perfectly with the audio, courtesy of USB2.0. When sitting at least a metre from a 19in monitor, the image was presentable and free of artefacts, but closer inspection showed significant pixilation and some blurring of faster action. There was a noticeable loss of smaller detail, and on-screen text was fuzzy and often difficult to read.
When we jumped into time-shift mode, and the image was madly buffered to hard disk, we found the occasional frame drop and the playback stuttered. This was probably more to do with bandwidth limitations in our test system, as it tried to cope with the throughput from the USB port, sustained writing to the hard drive and displaying a full screen image without losing audio synchronisation. In terms of recording, half an hour of 15Mb/s video will cost you around 700MB of hard drive space. You can play back through either the bundled application, or a standard MPEG player.
With set-top PVR systems, complete with hard drives 40GB or larger, now under the $1,000 mark, you have to wonder whether these types of devices are worth the effort. Although, if you absolutely need to use your PC for television viewing and recording, and you don’t need the absolute highest image quality, then this is simple and capable solution.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012