The ambitiously-named Links International has come up with a new USB bus-powered TV tuner, the "V-Gear PocketTV X(NTSC)-JP". It's cheap, it doesn't require a separate power adapter, it comes with a remote and it encodes to DivX (via software). Not bad at all.

Links International will release the "V-Gear PocketTV X(NTSC)-JP", a USB2.0 bus-powered external TV tuner, on 25 February. It will have no fixed price but is expected to retail for approximately 6980 yen. Supported operating systems are Windows 2000 and XP.

As it operates on USB bus-power, the TV tuner unit can be easily used with notebook PCs. TV broadcast and capture is performed by the included "SpeedVCR 2.1" software. Software encoding into MPEG-1/2 and DivX 5.2 formats is possible. The maximum capture resolution is 720 x 480 at 30 fps. According to the manufacturer, realtime encoding into MPEG-2 or DivX 5.2 is possible using a Pentium 4 2Ghz or faster CPU.

The tuner supports programming via iEPG and will automatically wake a PC from standby before recording starts and return it to standby/shutdown after recording finishes. Other functions includes image quality adjustment, de-interlacing and "Dynamic Desktop" which allows the TV picture to be displayed as the PC wallpaper.

Bundled software includes "PowerDirector 3 DE" for video editing and DVD authoring and "V-Gear BEE" for camera-based monitoring and MPEG-4 recording. A infra-red remote control is also included.

Composite and S-video jacks are provided for video input. Audio input and output is supported by an analog stereo (RCA) jack and a stereo mini-jack respectively. The external dimensions of the tuner are 112 x 70 x 27 mm and it weighs 180 grams.


Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20050214/links.htm

News Release:
http://www.links.co.jp/html/press2/v_gear_pocketx.html