OnAir Solution USB HDTV-GT mobile HDTV tuner
Price: $153.89

Introduction

You know, I’m lazy.  Among the other shocking revelations that I had at the turn of the New Year, realizing my laziness is probably the easiest to recover from.  It's also the easiest to ignore. And, well, the OnAir USB HDTV-GT is not helping one bit. Despite it being one of the best products I’ve reviewed, I think it actually is contributing further to my lethargy.

Consider this, with all the things we do with computers, work, games, music, and video, the one thing left is the living-room task of watching TV.  Yeah, yeah, Hilbert can build a HTPC, but what if you're lazy?  I’ve been using my computer for watching movies for years (something that could easily be done with a cheap DVD player), but watching TV on the computer was something rather specialized.  Now that we have large LCD monitors almost commonplace for computers, the time is plump (I say, plump!) for TV on the computer.

As I mentioned this concept is not new, of course, with products like ATI’s All-in-Wonder, Happauge, MCE, and MythTV, being available for many years, but it has always been a niche product.  Now, with the demise of analog signals, digital TV is now on its way.  Enter the USB HDTV-GT from OnAir Solution.  The GT is a portable, USB powered digital TV tuner with cable, digital, analog, and DVR/PVR abilities.  It instantly turns your computer, preferrably with a big LCD, into more than just a HTPC.  You don't even have to turn off the computer to install it.  How perfect is that? 

The GT covers nearly all the bases, but let’s see how perfect it really is.