KWorld PlusTV HD USB 315 TV Box - Watch & Record HDTV on your PC!
KWorld NTSC/ATSC QAM USB 2.0 TV Tuner & Recorder - PC-KW-ATSC-315U

I just wanted to post this to help the people who seem to be having performance issues. <br><br> I have the Kworld ATSC 300U Plus TV HD Hybrid stick 330. It's their smaller usb stick with similar features, but it doesn't have QAM. <br><br> To get smooth, full-screen HTDV video, I had to go into the TotalMedia software settings and choose to use Hardware Acceleration. This tells the program to use the processor and ram of your video card as opposed to that of your main CPU. If you have a decent videocard with at least 128mb ram, you will hopefully get nice performance. <br><br> Before I switched the setting, I was getting very choppy video, and that's with a 1.8ghz core duo laptop with 2gb ram. Since I switched the setting, the hdtv channels in range come in great at full screen. I've also hooked up my game systems with the s-video connection, and those also work great in full screen (before switching to Hardware Acceleration they were also choppy). <br><br> As far as the rebate... I had an issue with mine too (on another device). I just kept reminding them, and then all of a sudden I received an email response, and my 2 rebate checks showed up.
 
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Cant adjust the size of the viewing box so as to leave in a corner of the monitor and work in other windows. Audio does not disengage when closing the TV, so I must pull out the audio cable.
 
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I purchased 1. Installed it and it works fine with analog only,no ATSC. Buy.com replaced it with with a new unit. Still no ATSC. I have traded emails with Kworld 6 times over the the last 4 weeks. Still no resolution to a software problem.
 
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Easy to install, I hooked it up to my HDTV (Phillips) antenna and receive over 50 channels. I recorded several shows with excellent quality.
 
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This unit does what I purchased it for: To watch free over-the-air analog and digital (HD) television stations on my "media center" PC that's connected to a DLP projector. I guess I was lucky that I was already watching over-the-air analog television stations, so I already had "rabbit ears" (a large antenna with a coax connector) connected to my TV. I doubt you'd catch many (if any) stations (analog or digital) without using an antenna. Antennas are a dime-a-dozen anyway so it's not a large investment if you have to pick one up. Like at least one of the other users said, though, this thing is definitely not portable unless you have a portable antenna that you feel like carrying with you (slight sarcasm - not sure if such a thing exists). The unit is bus-powered which means it gets 5 volts power from the USB port. In other words, there is no (bulky) AC/power adapter, so that's handy. The software installed and functioned surprisingly well. Granted I haven't thoroughly tested it yet, it was straight-forward going through the setup wizard and then changing channels, going into full-screen mode, etc. Here in Austin, TX it picked up 7 digital (HD) stations and several more analog (traditional over-the-air) stations. The HD stations were a little choppy but I don't put blame on the software or the unit. I looked in Windows Task Manager and noticed the software was using close to 100% CPU, so I put the blame on not having a beefy CPU (I'm using an Athlon XP 3200+). I don't doubt that upgrading to at least a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (as recommended by KWorld) would alleviate this problem. About the negative comments regarding the mail-in rebates not being processed, I can't yet speak of this since I just sent in my rebate. I do recall though that they said to wait 4-6 or 4-8 weeks for the rebate to come in so I'm patiently hoping for the best. All in all, I think that $40 (which includes the $20 mail-in-rebate if I recall correctly) is a bargain for this unit.
 
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The unit does not work at all. I made a mistake by buying it and hopefully get a rebate. It turned out neither. Kworld cheating consumers by offering rebate which it does not intend to mail. What a shame. Buy.com should pull this product off the shelf. Like I said, I made a mistake twice buying with this company and never got any rebate nor working. There won't be a third time or ever!!!
 
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The box displays no cable and antenna connect to your laptop with the phrase "you can watch TV any where". It impress the consummer, with this product you can be watch TV at any place. You do not need TV cable or antenna to connect to the laptop in order to watch your favorite TV show. It is not true. Without antenna, You are not going to see any thing. In fact you need a very strong antenna signal. It means: You can not watch your favorite chanel when you are not connected to the cable or antenna, and you can not see your favorite shown any where and any time such as at the train, bus station or airport.
 
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I have purchased two k-World tuners from buy.com, both with rebates. I never received any of my rebates. I e-mailed them over a dozen times with no reply back. I called them over a dozen times and was told every time they only got my internet submission not my mailed submission. Each and every time I re-mailed the submission and I still was told they never got it. They absolutely refuse to honor their rebate and make every excuse not to fulfill their obligation. I could not return the products because I had to remove the barcodes from the boxes. I will never purchase another K-World product ever again.
 
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I'll keep this simple; just to reiterate the poor QAM performance, higher than listed system requirements, and extremely bad reputation for not honoring rebates; I experienced them all. Avoid at all costs; especially theirs.
 
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I bought it from the buy.com for the QAM capability, but very disappointed. It did not work out of box. I googled and followed some procedure posted on newegg, it temporarily worked after a few tries, give me 5 clear QAM channels out of 11 that my QAM TV picked, missing quite a few HD channels like ABC, FOX, PBS. I almost decided to keep it even with the poor performance until next day when I turned on the computer again. It lost all the channels and I have to repeat the 90 minutes procedure a few times to get lucky. After a few day fruitless effort, this card goes back even they charge 15% restocking fee.
 
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price is very good after rebate, now I can watch HDTV and record TV programs on my computer.
 
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I bought this because of the QAM tuner and I cannot get it to work. The analog is ok but the sound is sometimes out of sync. I think they should remove this product from the market since it does not do what it says it does.
 
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Easy setup, good software. I am running Windows Vista Premium on a Core 2 Duo 1.46 gig notebook. The only problem I have found, and it is quite annoying, is that apparently the software is using the system processor to display the video and it sometimes bogs down. Then the video gets choppy. I am still learning whether there might be anything I can do about this. Also, it requires several modules (you can see about 4 in the sys tray) to run, plus many drivers. That being said, it has never crashed and seems to work quite well. PC
 
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I tried installing this tuner and software twice but could never get it to work properly on my Windows XP system. To make things worse it's driver/software corrupted the drivers and/or software for my previous tuner which was working fine ( Autmnwave OnAir HDTV GT) causing me alot of work to get that OnAit GT tuner working properly for both HD & Analog TV again. I would not reccomend this tuner but would point people to The OnAir GT which installs easily & works quite well. With coupon & rebates I got this for free. I guess I got what I payed for. I'm sending it to a friend so he can experiment with it today. Good riddance. Buyer beware!
 
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I tried installing this tuner and software twice but could never get it to work properly on my Windows XP system. To make things worse it's driver/software corrupted the drivers and/or software for my previous tuner which was working fine ( Autmnwave OnAir HDTV GT) causing me alot of work to get that OnAit GT tuner working properly for both HD & Analog TV again. I would not reccomend this tuner but would point people to The OnAir GT which installs easily & works quite well. With coupon & rebates I got this for free. I guess I got what I payed for. I'm sending it to a friend so he can experiment with it today. Good riddance. Buyer beware!
 
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This tuner is horrible!!! K-World support is non-existent. I have a decent laptop (< 1 year old, > $1000) and it couldn't handle the stream. There is no processing inside the device. It's all done in software on the computer. The software is horrible. It locks up all the time. The scheduled recording function is completely unreliable. K-World is notorious for not honoring rebates. I wouldn't take this tuner if it was give to me for free. The drivers and software have corrupted my laptop to the point that it no longer works reliably. I need to now reload it. Stay away from this tuner and K-World products in general. A good Hauppauge tuner doesn't cost that much more.
 
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I just want to warn you that KWorld has been very iffy on customer service and rebates for me. I bought a TV Tuner from them, which worked just fine (although the manual was terrible), but I asked their customer care center a question, which was not answered for weeks. I also had rebates for this tuner, which I have not yet received (sent in 6 months ago), and to boot, I technically only could use one of the rebates here at Buy.com, because BOTH required the UPC from the box (I don't know if the current December rebates for this tuner are the same as I used).<br> However, if you want a nice, working TV Tuner with plenty of cables (I was quite happy with that aspect of the product), and don't mind paying the price without receiving rebates, go for it! Oh, and the buttons on the remote I have are not very good either.
 
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I'm surprised to say, this economic choice of DVD Maker, not only works, but works insanely well. The cyberlink software that is bundled with it turns out quite well. I've made a few DVDs out of my VHS but the resolution isn't that good, but I guess the old video formats have it's limitations.
 
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After reading many favorable reviews I had hopes that this product would give me some alternatives to the local cable company. That was not to be. Although I can pick up some local channels via an antenna on my TV, I was unable to pick up any channels using this USB Box via antenna. I am in Naples, Fl and the towers are from 5 to 50 miles away. The land is flat and I am on the first floor and cannot use an outdoor antenna as I am in a condo. Secondarily, I had hoped to get some un-scrambled digital channels from the Comcast cable feed. I got none. Analog, yes, digital, no. And finally, the documentation for the box is about the worst I have ever seen. If you are experienced, you can find your way around, but don't expect any help from the documentation.
 
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On my P4-2800 w 1GB of RAM, XP SP2, voice is out of sync with the image (regular TV channels), but image and audio quality is good if you ignore the 2-3 second offset. During playback in a window, CPU utilization hovers around 90%. Recording is choppy, and time shift is not working - not enough CPU cycles. My system has embedded video, Intel 845 chipset, 1600x1200@60Hz, 21" LCD screen. DVDs with software decoder playback with no issues, window or full screen, with about 50% CPU utilization, same for Divx files from an external USB drive or over the network (DVD resolution). When changing channels, on ocasion it does not lock on the desired channel - need to go up and come down one channel. When it does not lock up on a desired channel, it does not mute the audio - hope your speakers can take the abuse :) It skipped some channels during initial setup, but it allowed me to add them by hand, except for Channel 2 which will not work no matter what. Manufacturer's site does not list this model neither under Products or under Support. Software installed with no issues, and seems to work OK, once you take the time to experiment and go through all the menus. On the plus side, it seems to be PAL and SECAM capable, and lists 162 countries to pick from during initial setup.
 
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A lot of people out there say this doesn't work and I could not bring in any QAM digital cable channels at first either. <br><br> But then I did a few things and voilà it works beautifully now. Unfortunately I don't know which of the 3 things did the trick or if it was the combination lol I just know that after doing all three my unit picked up the signal from the cable with no problem. Here's what to do:<br><br> 1) The unit has 2 USB plugs. Plug them BOTH into a USB2 port, preferrably ones that are on the motherboard <br><br> 2) Make sure you use the provided TotalMedia software. If you have an older version of it (like I did) it does not work. Uninstall and reinstall from Disc <br><br> 3) Make sure you get the latest driver from kworld.com.tw then restart before you run the channel search <br> <br> My unit picks up all the networks and even lists the other digital cable channels but shows a lock icon since they are scrambled and not free. But yes, it works. So all of you who say it does not with the QAM - you probably did not do it right! :)<br><br> By the way I think you do not even have a cable subscription to receive the local channels in HD. I only have Internet with mine and get all the HD channels without extra cost.
 
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I am using this tuner with my laptop. It works good, the picture quality is good,in full screen the feed is slow.I found the remote all but useless, it is slow to react. This is due to usb connection rather than an internal PCI card. It records great and playback is fine in full screen. Overall with the exception of the remote I am satisfied.
 
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I bought this tuner because of the QAM, but it does not work. I google and found other buyers also experienced the same problems. I did not subscribe digital cable, but my LCD TV can pick up QAM HD Channel without any problem, while this tuner can detect the signal during the setup but can not decode/display any channel. I also tried Pinnacle Systems PCTV HD Pro Stick USB 2.0, which get detect more ATSC channels with the same antenna. The only thing good about this product is the software. It is user friendly and nice compare to other products.
 
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Computers > LCD Monitor & Projector > TV Tuner & Video Capture