Gamebridge... meh

So lately since my TV started to go fuzzy I've been looking for a cheaper TV capture card so at least I'll be able to watch on my computer. The only thing was the only one that the guy at the store would recommend was the KWorld ATSC 310U HDTV TV Tuner Box, which ran up to about $127 which I really didn't have at the time. So I looked into getting a cheaper box elsewhere thus landing me on the GameBridge TV (AVC-1410), which only costs $29.99 at Factory Direct (Christmas deal $20 off).

Firstly I was surprised with how small it was, like REALLY small (I'll up a picture of it compared to my ID when I get my camera phone back from getting repaired). It also has a fairly long USB cord measuring about 5 feet, and 2 inputs for either antenna tv, or RCA yellow, white, red cables (no HD). The setup was fairly easy, pop in the cd, read the instructions, install the software, that usual fair.

When I turn the video on I see it's fairly good quality, the only problem, it's only limited to 1024 x 768 resolution with no stretch option. Now I have a wide screen monitor and was a little upset by this. So as a result I started scouring the internet for a third party program which would be compatible with the hardware. No luck. (I have actually read of someone getting it to work with some type of Direct Show player, but I had no luck). Sometimes I could get he video set up but the audio would never come through quite right. In the end I ended up reverting back to the original program on the CD and editing a shortcut to open it in 640 x 480 compatibility mode which stretched the video, but also the rest of the screen leaving me to not be able to do anything on my computer while watching TV.

These complaints aren't really THAT bad compared to the price and the overall fairly good functionality of the item (aside from occasional frame rate drops and uncompressed video[BTW make sure you have a big hardrive cause those videos are pretty big]). I wouldn't give it an 8/10 like the Xbox Team gave it, but I would give it a very respectable 7; but in no way did it blow my pantaloons off.