VideoMate E750 PCIe Dual DVB-T TV Card Dual Tuner

VideoMate E750 Features in depth

End of the day it’s good software that makes or breaks the deal for a good TV Tuner and fortunately this is where Compro Technology excels. The included software integrates well with the desktop and the E750 giving users a rich and fulfilling feeling. The advanced Picture in Picture (PIP) or Picture Out Picture (POP) function allows users to watch 6 live TV channels simultaneously. POP essentially shows a preview screen outside the main screen which is the opposite of PIP. In real life I don’t see too many of us previewing 6 channels at once, but hey at least it’s future proof…

If you so desire you could also set the main playback channel as your desktop background but this isn’t a personal favourite of mine but maybe useful in a multi desktop environment.

(Picture Courtesy of Compro Technology)

(Picture Courtesy of Compro Technology)

Timeshifting is another handy feature most users would love to have and this is natively supported. Depending on the free space you have on your hard drive you can define the amount of time the live video can be temporarily stored on your drive and timeshift back if you wish to do so. Even if you timeshift back to a particular scene the recording process of the live feed does not get affected so features wise it’s no different to a highend set-top box available in the market.

(Picture Courtesy of Compro Technology)

One of the main features we truly wanted to check out on the VideoMate E750 is the scheduling feature and its capability to wake up a PC that has been completely switched off. So we went about setting up a schedule giving the appropriate settings. You can tell the software to Auto Login to the PC which is simply a matter of ticking a check box and also mute the speakers automatically while recording. This would be useful if you’re recording something late at night. Nevertheless once all the parameters were selected and the schedule was made we shut down the PC from the usual windows menu. (Note that it was a complete shutdown and not hibernate or standby). True enough, 5 or so minutes before the start of the program the PC came back to life, logged on and started to record the channel we set it up for. There probably is some sort of internal clock that sends a signal to the PSU to simulate the press of the power button once a schedule is setup. If power is cut to the PSU as well then all scheduled data will also be wiped out, so if you do shutdown your PC regularly ensure you do not cut power to the PSU or your scheduled recordings will not start. Another handy feature we found was the ability to record TV programmes directly to DVD which can be useful in certain situations.

If you wish to make your own movies with the captured data, the included Corel DVD MovieFactory 5 SE will be your tool to play with. It offers a load of functionality in an easy to use GUI.

Another surprising fact we came across was that even though we were watching live TV on one channel and recording on another the CPU resource usage was very minimal and didn’t disrupt the users experience in any way. We didn’t see an increase of more than 7-10% of CPU resources being utilised by the E750 and this was while testing out all the functionality the E750 offers. This is one area where a clear distinction is seen between a well known brand and an el-cheapo unknown brand.