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Testing: The first time you run the program it asks if you’d like to scan for channels. It gives you 4 options to choose from; Analog Cable, Analog Over-the-air, Digital Cable and Digital Over-the-air. The 2 Cable options will pick up local cable channels if you still have a local cable company that doesn’t force you to use a cable box. Since I’m running a satellite in my home and no longer have local in-ground cable, I was only able to test the over-the-air options. To be honest, that’s what I’d think most people would be using it for, so it’s a “bonus” option more than a primary feature. Since I’m reviewing this based on someone who travels quite a bit, I’ll say right off the bat that the time it takes to scan all of the DTV on-air channels is between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. However, it’s a very quick and simple process for those of us on-the-go.
It seems that the “target” db to get a constant feed of Digital picture is right around 20db, which I was able to achieve this for all of the major stations. The program is able to run in either a windowed mode or Full Screen (my laptop screen runs native @1920x1200) which gives you full HDTV 1080 if both the station broadcast and your monitor has that capability. Out of the 5 major stations in my area, 4 of the 5 broadcast in 1080i, so this was not a problem. The only other station in my area that runs in 720p scales very nicely to full screen. While full screen is great while on the road, sometimes you still want to be doing your work and still be able to hear and see the TV. OnAir gives a number of options for this. The first being the standard windowed mode shown below and the second option utilizing what I can only describe as a Windows DreamScene style display where It is full screen. The only problem with this is it replaces your desktop background with the continuous video. I didn’t really find a personal use for it on my laptop while on the road, but I can definitely see the benefit to having that option in a multi-monitor environment. Especially were you don’t want to accidentally swap back and forth between your active program and the TV. Below is a full screenshot of my desktop including what the channel guide looks like as well as the TV guide below. How far in the future you see the program guide is based on how much the particular channel sends with the Digital signal. In the case of Channel 5 NBC West Palm Beach, I was only able to see 1 day ahead.
Here’s the standard interface, which gives you the option to play video files as well as the ability to capture video or still images.
As a side note to image and video capture,
when using the Timeshift mode you can pause, go back to a scene
that just played, and then image capture. You can also video
capture and save it to a playable video format (TRP) As stated above, most of the stations in my area are now broadcasting in at least 720p and 4 of them (NBC, CBS, ABC and CW) were broadcasting in 1080i, which looks beautiful. While nothing to do with the unit itself, two of the stations were broadcasting at an odd resolution. While at 1080i, I was under the assumption that all of video was 1920x1080. I was actually getting broadcast resolutions at 1920x1088 for some reason from NBC and CBS. I’m guessing that this is to avoid any missing lines at the 4 sides of your screen if the horizontal or vertical alignment is off. You have two file format options when performing screen capture; JPG or BMP. Here is a screen capture of the 1920x1088 NBC News Palm Beach broadcast.
As an operational tip, I noticed that by enabling the Timeshift by setting it to at least 1minute, then pausing a show as soon as you started watching it, got rid of almost all of those “gaps” in viewing from any low db areas. Conclusion: In conclusion, I can say that while I’ve only used one other TV Tuner, I've really come to love the OnAirGT USB HDTV Tuner. In fact I’ve continued to bringing it with me wherever I go. So far I've had great luck with this device during my travels in Florida, even with the broadcast antennas being located 20 to 50 miles away. I would “strongly” recommend the OnAirGT to anyone who travels and wants to keep up with their favorite shows. There's noting like watching HD programming on the go! Pro’s:
Con’s:
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