Contents continued

     Everything you need to connect and get started is included, but don't expect any extras.  After all this is a white box, so you get only the cables you need and a driver disk.

This cable is an SMB to Coaxial cable and allows you to plug in your cable TV or antenna.

     To connect the device to your computer you get a dual head USB cable.  This cable has an extra end on it so you can plug it into two USB ports on your computer.  Why would you want to do that?  Well if you have an older computer, the extra end will be needed for power.  However, with a newer computer, plugging the main end in will be enough.

Layout

     The device is only 3.5" wide so they had to cram a lot into a little space.  From left to right are the Composite audio and video ports (red, white and yellow), S-video and SMB to Coaxial input.  The little indentation on the far left isn't used on this model and that's too bad.  It's labeled "remote".

     On the front is only the super bright blue LED on the left and on the right is the USB connector.  Again there is another indentation that is labeled "FM" that is not used on this model.  I understand that they were limited on space, but I really don't like the USB connector being located on the front.  So now instead of having cables coming out of the back, I'm going to have at least one cable coming out of the front and the back.  The LED is blindingly bright.  It's distractingly bright.  This is not a good idea for something intended to be used in a media center.  I used this in my living room and the LED was so bright that it illuminated the entire room.  I relocated the device to my media PC cabinet, and even with the doors closed there was blue light coming from the cabinet.

Installation

     You would think that installation would be a no brainer, but it wasn't.  My computer is a little on the older side.  It uses an Intel 845 chipset and has a 2.4GHz P4.  I decided to be safe and plug both USB connectors into the front USB ports.  Upon doing this, windows generated an error stating that the device I had plugged in was defective.  I unplugged the extra USB connector and got the same error.  Thinking that the device might have been damaged in shipping, I contacted AVerMedia.  The first issue was using both USB connectors.  This confused windows and caused the error.  Windows thought I had plugged two separate devices in and one of them didn't work.  Next the problem was using the front USB ports.  The device has to be plugged into a USB port that is directly connected to your motherboard, at least in my case.  Of course none of this is in the quick start guide, so it made installation harder than it should have been.  Once this was taken care of, installing the driver was easy and I was ready to watch TV.