ASUS Z83V TV Tuner - first hand experience

I tried the AVerMedia TV Tuner with a few popular TV programs and here are the results if anyone is interested:

ASUS Home Theater 3.0 (included with laptop):
TV - works perfectly
FM - works perfectly
Remote - works perfectly

BeyondTV 4.0.0:
TV - video works, audio didn't work. I dont like this program so I didnt try to get it to work.
FM - didn't work
Remote - didn't work

MediaPortal 2.0 RC1:
TV - worked. It works fine, just way too much setup is required to make it work in the PVR as desired. I just wanted to test its functionality then uninstall the software.
FM - Ditto for the FM Tuner.
Remote - couldn't get it to work.

WinDVR 3.0:
TV - video worked, audio did not. I could not get a screencapture either!
FM - FM tuner not supported by program
Remote - remotes not supported by program

ChrisTV Lite 2.70:
TV - video worked, audio did not. It would change the audio capture source to the proper source but it wouldn't stick. I would re-open the settings and it would be back on the wrong audio source. I never got audio to work.
FM - I don't think FM tuner is supported by this program.
Remote - remotes not supported by program

WinAMP TV beta 11:
TV - worked
FM - worked
Remote - remotes not supported by program

iuVCR 4.9.4.367:
TV - worked
FM - FM not supported by program
Remote - remotes not supported by program

HT TV Plus 4.0 Gold:
Program failed to work with the TV Tuner card.

MEEDIO 1.38:
Program failed to work with TV Tuner card. It had me send technical details about the card to the manufacturer.

ShowShifter:
TV - video worked, audio did not.
FM - FM not supported by program
Remote - didn't see support for remotes even though the software makes all indication that it works with remotes.

If anyone wants me to test others, just hollar.
I looked for a download link to SageTV but couldn't find one.

After a lot of work I have some pictures to show you comparing three TV Tuners...

My leadtek Winfast TV2000XP, which was a really hot product back in 2001. It was $65 when i bought it.
My Hauppauge WinTVGO. This was a hot product like 8 years ago...it was one of the first TV Tuners to my knowledge.
The Asus AVerTV TV Tuner module.

It took a lot of work to get these. The ASUS TV Tuner was a bitch.
I wanted to make all the pictures have the same source software. The LeadTek and Hauppauge homegrown softwares take screen captures, but the ASUS Mobile Theater doesn't.
I knew WinDVR worked with the Hauppauge and it took screen captures.
It worked fine with the LeadTek, but it would NOT work with the ASUS. It would refuse to take Screen Captures...besides the fact that the audio failed to work.

I found a program called iuVCR which worked fine with the ASUS. It wouldn't let me screen capture, but it would record. So I installed it on all three computers and recorded uncompressed AVI video for a minute. The video came out to be over 800 MB on each computer. So that took some time to transfer over the network... I didnt feel like redoing the whole setup to get smaller video...that required a lot of setup too.
After I got the videos all on one computer, I was able to view the LeadTek and Hauppauge videos no problem, but the ASUS needed a conexant codec that comes only with the ASUS Mobile Theater. So I had to go on the ASUS laptop and copy the codec's 7 or so files and register each of the three .ax files and the one .dll manually using regsvr32 /s. Then the video finally worked and I was able to do some alt-printscreen action.
On a side note, the codec for recording video on the ASUS, the conexant, which shows in GSpot as CXF2, has some serious issues with playback in WMP. If you try to move the video forward or backward it will stall WMP forcing you to kill the process.

Order is as follows:
ASUS, Hauppauge, Leadtek








In terms of IMAGE QUALITY, the ASUS is the best.
The LeadTek appears quite bright, while the Hauppauge appears rather dark. The ASUS provides the perfect brightness and contrast.
On a side note, I did not modify any of the setting in iuVCR. They were all left on their defaults.

In terms of image output, there seems to be a squeezing issue with the ASUS.
If you notice, the ASUS image appears a little squeezed. I dont know why this is.
When I viewed TV in iuVCR, ChrisTV, WinDVR, MediaPortal, as well as the ASUS Mobile Theater the image shows up with the black bars on the side, indicating its a little squeezed and shifted a bit to the right.

I will have to inspect this issue to see if it can be resolved. It is possible that the TV needs to be viewed at a higher resolution...