VideoMate S350 is a powerful digital satellite TV tuner card with analog video/audio capture. It accompanies Philips 9-bit ADC chip, the state-of-the-art silicon digital TV tuner, Compro Picture Purifying Technology, and Power Up Technology to provide superior HDTV video quality reception on your PC. Sound comes out through a computer's built-in speakers or through external speakers. Sound cards also have connection ports for regular and studio headphones, microphones, and numerous other audio devices. How to Install a New Sound Card. Computer sound cards connect to a PC's motherboard through PC slots. They are easy to connect and may be secured in place by a screw into the side of the tower case.
Compro Technology is hardly known on our market. Founded in 1989, the company dealt mostly with OEM orders and worked with such companiesas HP, Compaq and Visiontek. Their first independent solution wasNVIDIA Personal Cinema developed together with the Californian ITgrand and released in 2001. In 2002 Compro Technology launched a line ofvideo cards based on NVIDIA's chips and TV tuners.
The company's biased towards innovative solutions in their products.You will see what comes out of it.
This review has an unusual story. Its first review was slashing becauseof a great number of problems in the Russian network. Even brand-name manufacturerssometimes simply give 'objective' reasons or ignore Russian customers. Theguys at Compro Technology didn't have a chance to test their products inour conditions and helped us to adapt their software. We couldn'treject such a praiseworthy initiative as well as let down our readers. Thatis why a month and a half later, when several software and drivers versionswere changed, the engineers at Compro (Floyd, that was really pleasant todeal with you :-) ) and iXBT.com (i.e. me) come up with a bright product.So, let's start from the very beginning.
- This Realtek Audio Driver for Windows 10 64 bit will install for many laptop (notebook)/Desktop computers that use the Realtek sound chip. This driver is only for the 64bit version of Windows. Some versions of Windows have generic or older OEM drivers included with the system. It is important that you use the latest audio drivers.
- Comartsystem Korea. Download drivers for sound cards for free. Operating System Versions: Windows XP, 7, 8. Are you tired of looking for the drivers for your devices? DriverPack Online will find and install the drivers you need automatically.
- Select the arrow next to Sound, video and game controllers to expand it. Right-click the listing for your sound card or audio device, select Uninstall device, select the Delete the driver software for this device check box, and then select Uninstall. Restart your PC. Note: Be sure to save documents and any other current work before you restart.
Accessory pack
The package and accessory pack are a good example of how such things should be made.
The box is a real eye catcher. Besides, the designers use hard high-quality cardboard with the words stamped out.
Inside
- Tuner
- Remote Control
- External IR sensor of the remote control
- Cable for sound card's line-in
- AUX-in cable
- Cable for mainboard power supply connector
- Adapters for aerial connectors
- FM aerial
- 4 software CDs
- Installation manual
- Software manual
Design and specification
The black PCB, gold-plated connectors and a colorful sticker on thetuner look attractive.
Functions of the connectors are written on the back (a rare thing these days).
The designers are pretty attentive to details, for example, thesoftware and drivers are recorded on CD-Rs, each having polygraphic pictureson top.
This is what differs hi-end products from mainstream ones, and it'sespecially pleasant if the price remains affordable.
TV and FM signals are received by the Philips FM1236 unit.
Video and audio signals are decoded with the 9pin Philips 7134HL ADC (we know it from the EZ-TV (TVP3XP)) with the PAL/SECAM D/K support (the countries with the NTSC standard get it with the 7133HL chip).
There's actually nothing to boast of, and we turn to the distinguishingfeatures.
First of all, the tuner supports the Compro POWER UP SCHEDULING technology. A connector from the Power button of your PC case goes to the mainboard via the tuner allowing it to control turning on/off.
Secondly, the Picture Purifying Technology supported improves reception and image quality; it includes:
- redesigned PCB
- double voltage control for higher stability and noise reduction (besides, the control is placed as far from the receiver as possible)
- proprietary software including deinterlacing, Noise Removal and Video Smoothing (software anti-aliasing in resolutions over 640x480).
The other functions are standard. Just note that it doesn't support video capture in MPEG4, though you can get it with alternative software.
Testbed configuration
- Athlon 2800XP CPU (Barton)
- Gigabyte 7VAX mainboard (KT400 chipset)
- Inno3D GeForce FX 5900 video card
- 512 MB PC3200 from Samsung
- Creative Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 sound card
- IBM DTLA 305020 hard drive
- Windows XP Professional (SP1) ENG and Windows XP Professional (SP1) RUS
Compro Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver Download 64-bit
Installation
The installation process is standard
but even in this case Compro goes its own way. The tuner has RCA connectors identical to those on home equipment
and the antennas are connected to them through adapters.
Such solution makes its installation into the PCI slot simpler but it's impossible to take out the tuner without removing the adapters, andthey do not go out easily at that. Taking into account other connectors onthe back that can take quite a lot of time.
Configuring
Compro Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver Downloads
For operation under the DirectX 9.0b you should download the latest patch that corrects some mistakes in operation of the PAL/SECAM tuners. It can be downloaded from Microsoft's site for the English and Russian versions of the Windows XP.
When all the settings were made in the program menu (do not neglect the codecs of Windows Media Player 9)
we got the following devices:
The tuner uses its own software for operation.
CompoPVR for the TV mode
ComproFM for the FM receiver mode
and ComproDVD player
which actually is the PoverDVD 4.0 with additional audio featuresselling separately by Cyberlink. It should be noted that there's only NVIDIAamong hardware makers which developed its own DVD player, that is why don'tjudge too strictly.
Here you can also find some programs that we saw in the review of the MSI-8918 Personal Cinema FX5200
Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2SE
and Ulead VideoStudio 7SE (updated version)
In the tray you can find icons for the ComproRemote and ComproPVR, but not for the ComproFM.
By the reasons above we use the latest driver versions for ComproPVRand ComproFM (2.3.0.9, ComproPVR1571 and ComproFM1290).
When the ComproPVR is started for the first time it offersfor you to choose a country, TV standard, audio and video devices
then you get to the Channel tab of the Options menu which controls the frequency range and configures channels
The developers are going to include the forced auto scanning in thenext versions but I think it's better to let users choose themselves, becauseit's simpler to tick off channels if you know the frequencies than to waitfor the scanning to stop (though in my case it took only a minute) and disableundesirable channels. However, it's not that important and it can be evenbetter for an inexperienced user. That was how the guys at Compro explainedthe forced auto scanning.
The sensitivity of the VideoMate TV Gold Plus is on the level of the previous record-breaker EZ-TV as it caught all the existent channels. The fine tuning
which can be enabled with the Fine Tune button wasn't actuallyneeded. The empty channels couldn't be avoided, though it always was a sideeffect of good sensitivity.
Cyrillic names are well supported
On the next tab (Video/Audio )
you can change video parameters, aspect ratio (the Custom mode makes it arbitrarily changeable) and audio format (mono/stereo). The sleep mode can also be adjusted (this useful option is rarely supported intuners).
The Recording tab deals with recording parameters.
What a surprise - all the stuff fit into a single tab. Rememberthat the ComproPVR supports only MPEG1 and MPEG2 formats.
On the Timeshifting tab you can change resolution, videoand audio bitrates, buffer size and turn on/off Noise Removal and Video Smoothing
The last tab named System Devices allows changing audio and video devices, adjust the audio-in for recording and playing (note that the tuner can be connected to the card's AUX port)
Compro Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver Download Windows 7
Quality
Compro Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver Download
The image quality is really good; but I can't say whether it wasthe tricks above that helped.