written by on 21/09/2009
I've been using a Freecom DVB-T USB stick for several years with XP, Vista, and more recently Windows 7 - it has worked fine on all occasions. Used in combination with Media Centre, it's great after the drivers have been installed correctly. I've been impressed the most by the small aerial which has actually provided a better signal than our new roof mounted aerial.
Overall, 9/10.
written by on 19/08/2008
The Freecom DVB-T USB Stick is poor. The small pin gets disconnected after a year of use.. So no point of buying it. Overall, a very poor performance
written by James0185 on 28/12/2007
Great picture and easy to use on outdoor aerial - plug it in and see.
BUT, I think the mobile aerial is rubbish and will not work in this region
written by ronlizpatsimon on 26/08/2007
A very useful product. Some people will be disappointed with the signal pick-up from the supplied aerial (a small rod). It is true that you need to be in an area of high signal strength to succeed with that aerial. My camping aerial is a £10 one from "Roys of Wroxham". It fits in a box about 35cm square by 10cm deep.
written by StanleySocks on 23/08/2007
Firstly, the Freecom DVB-T USB stick being Vista compatible is a complete farce, you're likely to do more harm than good if you take this product fresh out of the box and install it on a PC running Windows Vista. Add onto that you're lucky to get ANY signal from the aerial provided (I picked up a grand total of zero channels, whereas my freeview box gets them all). Even with an actual indoors aerial I got zilch. A completely pointless product, it's going back for a refund as it serves no purpose whatsoever.
written by foxview on 26/03/2007
The DVB aerial is very good, it takes approx 10 minutes to search for the channels and then you can store them for viewing just like tv, it comes with a remote which is a little fiddly until you get used to it. You can pause live tv and then carry on watching when you want (up to 1 hour anyway). The aerial is not too bad, i am close to a transmitter but the signal still gets lost occasionally. You can record TV and store it on your hard drive, you can also burn the programme onto a dvd and watch later.
written by PSCRUTTON on 17/01/2007
I have tried two of these wretched things on several different computers and got absolutely nowhere.
With the supplied internal aerial I have never managed to even successfully complete a channel scan let alone watch anything. If connected to a roof mounted aerial, the unit will complete a scan and list a number of channels but not a complete list of Freeview channels. Having selected a channel you sometimes get a picture and sometimes not, but I have never seen any Teletext.
It crashes all the time, is very fussy about which USB port it is plugged into and is generally unsatisfactory. The ideal of being able to watch TV on your laptop is a good one but don't expect to be doing so with this thing.
written by MBarron33 on 29/05/2006
I bought the Freecom Digital TV USB Stick Freeview Receiver from the Amazon website, where I found it was offered for the best price. I can now watch and record TV from my PC in a room where there is no aerial socket. I appreciate that many people have had problems with receiving channels, but it seems to me that this product works perfectly well provided you can receive Freeview channels. I am very happy with it.
written by kriss7 on 27/05/2006
The Freecom DVB-T USB Stick may or may not be any good, and as I never got it working I will never know. All I can tell you is their support is rubbish, with national telephone rates, numerous calls to get past the recorded message, and up to 48 hours to get an RMA number to return items for repair. As I only had it a day, I sent it back to the supplier for a refund. Because of this I would not at the moment purchase any other Freecom products either. Bad support can ruin an otherwise good product, in my opinion.
written by clarite on 03/04/2006
It took three attempts to get most of the channels to load on my Freecom Digital TV USB Stick Freeview Receiver. At first attempt, only half worked OK, then at the second attempt a couple more were accessible, but after trying for the third time it became quite obvious that not all channels were available with this receiver box. I did try moving the antennae and the processor, but to no avail. Channel 4 and 5 proved to be elusive, so I had no choice but to send it back to Amazon who gracefully refunded the cost of the item and the postage costs.
written by Gerard H on 10/01/2006
Initially the Freecom Digital TV USB Freeview Receiver looked like an ideal solution. There is no messing about plugging in PCI cards and connecting cables to the sound card. You just plug the device into a USB port and off you go. The device looks neat and tucks nicely into a laptop bag. If life had proved that simple it would have been wonderful.
The main body of the stick feels well made. It does get a bit warm when in use, so don't cover it up. The socket for the aerial is separate and has to be pushed into the end of the stick. This connection is a bit flimsy, and moving it does have an effect on the strength and quality of the received signal. I live in a fairly good area to receive the Freeview channels, and the small aerial has proved up to the job. It comes with a cable to run from the USB port. I have experienced problems trying to run it through a USB hub.
The software is an odd collection of screens. The main screen is graphical and some of the other screen wouldn't look out of place in Windows 3.11. The main screen gives you that standard video style control, and allows you to select your channel, and gives you information such as the current channel, signal strength, etc. It looks OK, but I feel it would have been better if it were a bit smaller. You can run the video screen in a window, but there doesn't appear to be any way to hide the caption bar at the top of the screen. It means if you have it shrunk to a fairly small window whilst you're working, the caption bar can be a bit overwhelming. A few simple lines of source code would have given the option to hide the caption bar. The first thing you need to do when you use the program is to scan for any available channels. You go into the set-up screens, select the channels tab and click on the Scan button. You can't get much simpler. Well that's the theory. My experience was that the PC consistently locked when it was about 60% of the way through. It took a whole weekend of fiddling with the software, it's drivers and windows, to get 100% of the way through. This was in between the PC locking up when starting the program. I don't get many applications that make my copy of XP lock up, but this Freecom software manages to do it frequently and unpredictably. I have tried installing it on a few PC's with mixed results. It has worked on some with no problems at all.
Back to the channels... Once you manage to scan all the channels you will notice that they are in the order they were detected. So, you then need to put them in order. It does not use the Freeview channel numbers. If you select channel 10, you get the 10th channel in the list. This gets a bit irritating if you are familiar with the Freeview channels. You now have to remember two sets of channel numbers. There are a few bugs (apart from the ones that make it crash) in the software. You can set the software to record programs at a particular time. This can be done from the Electronic Program Guide, which is good. Again the results I got were intermittent. It would report that it had recorded a program, but the file containing the program would be nowhere to be found on the PC. However, you could try it again and it would work without fault. I set it to record a 3 hour-long program on one of the Radio channels over night, only to be faced with a screen in the morning that said: "This program has performed an illegal operation". It got 40 minutes of the program before it messed up.
Being a software developer makes you look at software from a slightly different angle. The difference between a mediocre piece of software and an excellent piece of software is how much consideration is given to how the software will be used and attention to detail. Looking at the Freecom software I get the impression that it was completed in a rush. A few ideas about the interface were started but not thought out properly, and some parts of the software were just thrown together as quickly as possible.
I've registered with the support section of the Freecom web site, and reading the postings is interesting. Some people are complaining that they have tried to get support but get no response. Some say they got an immediate response. Some have problems with bits of the software and others say it works fine. It reflects my experience. The product is good in principle, but in reality the product and the company don't seem to have quite got it together properly. I think a few hours spent looking at the issues that people have raised with this product would easily turn it into a reliable and excellent product, but as it stands it is a case of buyer beware... it may work... It may not work.
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Bfdjng's Response to Gerard H's Review
Written on: 31/07/2009
I found this review very helpful because...it makes me wonder why I should buy Freecom giving bad support on a questionable product.