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Monday, April 10, 2006 

Microstar Mega Sky 580 from MSI for £30.

HD capable, USB 2.0 DVB tuner for under £30. Wow... I'm not sure if any Linux Drivers would support this, but I love the idea of the HDTV PC tuner coming down in price.


Link :Sub-£30 Digital TV mini receiver HDTV ready PVR - PVR Wire

Hi,

Just to let anyone who gets one of these know, they work great. Admittedly, I have only tested with media center, but if it works there, at least the hardware is capable. One thing tho, if you open up the usb device (the black part on the top can be pried off.. gently or the tiny legs will come off, but doesn't matter, can just glue it back on), you'll see that there is a piece of metal that acts as a heatsink for 2 chips. On mine it wasn't making very good contact with the one of the chips heat rising pad, so i have just bent it down to sit flat on both chips. It does run hot, but is stable, no skipped frames from overheating etc, as reported elsewhere. It probably voids the warranty, but i didn't pay much anyway :) Another thing.. the inbuilt antenna is useless, but again, as i was using it for a fixed media center (not a laptop), it fits the bill perfectly. Could probably make it run even cooler by taking the usb casing off and hooking it up to a decent heatsink etc, but it seems to work pretty well. I'm just a windows media center person at the moment (for lack of hardware to try Myth on), but hopefully my next project will involve myth, and if it supports these, even better :)

Thanks for the review of the chip, and the tips for other folks!

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