Mega Sky 580 TV Tuner gives Freeview in a thumb

MSI SENT me a nice little gadget and the first thing you notice about the Microstar Mega Sky 580 is its tiny price, not its tiny size. Microdirect is selling it at £28.14, VAT included which is absolutely a bargain price for a brand name, external Digital - Freewiew - Tuner that is not only Media Centre Compatible but also supports HDTV, comes with a credit card sized remote control and an antenna with a magnetic base. That's roughly half the price of another decent USB Digital TV Tuner.

The USB tuner comes in a cardboard box with nothing more than a mere CDROM on top of the above mentionned accessories. The CDROM contains Presto PVR sottware, the PDF version of the manual and the drivers. Physically, the USB receiver resembles an oversized USB flash drive. It is black in colour and has one aerial adaptor at one end and the USB connector at the other. MSI states that the minimum hardware requirements for the Mega Sky 580 are a Celeron 800MHz, 256MB and a minimum of 1GB memory. I've tried it on a Dual Pentium 3 700MHz with 1GB memory and a 32MB Matrox G400MAX Dual Head and a Toshiba Equium laptop with a Celeron D 2.93GHz processor, 512MB memory and a shared Radeon 7000 video module with the same results.

Before installing it, I had an email from an MSI UK inhouse engineer who advised me to install a 11.5MB last minute patch to improve things. I was fortunate enough to be a reviewer to get this kind of service. Similarly, try to get the latest patches and software before you install anything on your computer, those for the Megasky 580 can be found here and here.

It might save you from hours of frustration. The installation was a breeze. And after installing the patch, I started out to scan the channels. Living on the outskirts of London, I found it quite difficult to get Digital TV using the small antenna.

Things improved when I used a passive indoor antenna and reception was even better as soon as I switched to an external antenna. So the first thing to be aware of is to forego the supplied external antenna if you live in a weak reception area. You can check for that here.

Finding the channels takes only a matter of minutes with the right setup. Start the Presto PVR software, then select the USB TV Tuner, and then let the tuner automatically find the channels. Bear in mind that this is a digital only TV tuner, it won't allow you to track and view analog TV and there's no radio tuner as well although you can listen to Digital Radio - DVB-T - but not DAB. I did find the 52 channels currently in operations although some of them were slightly snowy and others near perfect. The Tuner is HDTV compliant, meaning that it can, in theory, receive high definition programmes when they will be available; will your computer be able to play them though? That's another question.

Other features that the Mega Sky offers are Personal Video Recorder functions, Time shifting, Electronic Program Guide and Digital Teletext - although I've not been able to get the teletext to work correctly. You can also capture separate frames as BMP or JPG. Another fancy feature is the ability to run the TV channels as your background. Perfect if, like me, you have two screens. The Mega Sky 580 is Media Centre Edition compatible, which means that it can be controlled using the MCE remote and enjoy the goodies MCE delivers.

The Presto PVR software is very easy to use and intuitive. Moving from one channel to another can be tricky; at least it was for me. The software offers Picture in Picture - I've not tried it and some users report that it is not working - as well as Multi screen or channel surfing. It comes with a number of patented technologies which aim at making your viewing experience more pleasant. Interestingly, you can burn what you view straight to your DVD writer. More of all it here.

But bear in mind one or two things. First, you have to have at least a Pentium 4 running at 2GHz and I would strongly suggest a dual core or HT enabled processor if you want to watch and record movies at the same time. On both test machines, I've encountered more drop frames than I would like. Furthermore, going for a dedicated graphics card rather than a shared one does have a definite impact on performance. The rest of your subsystem is also as in important. Ideally, you would have a separate high capacity 7200rpm hard disk drive dedicated to the Mega Sky 580. My laptop was using a 5400rpm HDD and you could hear that it was struggling at times.

Last but not least, I have no reports whether you can run multiple Mega Sky 580s in a bid to watch and record different channels. I am also concerned about the fact that the Mega Sky 580 warms almost immediately on use. I don't know if it is going to affect the lifespan of the product, especially if this is combined with poor air circulation behind a tower case.

In conclusion, a very worthy nifty gadget, which comes just on time for the world cup. Pick them up before they are gone. I sincerely hope that MSI has more than enough in stock. Watching goals on your computer while working might not be work efficient but at least, you will be at your desk, not in the company canteen. But for it to gather more marks, I thoroughly expect the next Mega Sky to solve some of the problems I have encountered and to offer more functionality, even if it means a higher price. µ