[Electronics-talk] Digital Televisions

[Baracco, Andrew W]

I might have posted this before, but perhaps on another list.  This came
from a ham radio newsletter.
Andy

TV tuner works with screenreader

This comes to us from Luella, KE0RF, via Ken, KB3LLA. It was posted on
the AccessComp list at Yahoo Groups. This is great information from
Steven Clark of Kansas City.

Hi, I got a new toy delivered today. It is also the first item I bought
from www.woot.com, and doubt it will be the last. I got a Sabrent USB
2.0 Digital HDTV Tuner. This thing is great from what I've found so far.
It turns your computer into a TV. It receives those cool new HD channels
that are out there floating around in Kansas City and other cities as
well.

It comes with a small HD antenna that screws onto the device. The tuner
plugs into a USB 2.0 port and will not work with USB 1.0. I've found it
to be very easy to use with Window-Eyes. After installing the software
and the USB hardware, it will ask to scan channels. From what I
understand it will work with digital cable but since we just have
standard cable, nothing to try out there. So I chose to have it scan
using the antenna for channels and it found 22.

A list of channels is presented in a grid format with the station
letters and channel in each grid entry. It was very simple to arrow
around through the channels and find the one I wanted. Once I was on the
channel I wanted to watch, I pressed the context key and then enter on
the first item which Window-Eyes told me is play.

I knew that Nova on KCPT is described and after it started playing that
channel, I pressed the context key again and went down to the audio
settings. The first selection was checked and I found another audio
choice below. I selected the second choice, pressed enter and I heard
the TV show and the described show in my left ear. Yeah, I'm using
headphones, but it sounds just as good through the built in speakers on
my netbook.

You can also set the audio to only be on the left or right for anything
you are watching.

It comes with a remote and the buttons are setup in a grid. Ruthie made
me an Excel spreadsheet with what each button does.

I'm very happy with this purchase and am happy to find everything so
accessible. I haven't tried recording anything yet, but I did find in
the options menu one can select to record both video and audio or just
audio. The options menu works fine with Window-Eyes as well.

I bought this great device for $29 from www.woot.com, and while shopping
around to get a second one for Ruthie, I've seen them selling for about
$39 or so plus shipping.

Editor's note: Woot.com sells items out quickly, so you probably won't
be lucky enough to locate one there, but your dedicated Handiham staff
searched and found them at TigerDirect for under $40:
http://tinyurl.com/mq3zps