Flush Fit Expresscards

Ok time to make a list of flush fit expresscardcards..

While card readers are the main ones, they also make Esata and TV Tuners..

http://www.apiotek.com/Global/Product/Add-on_Card/EC-ES03I.htm

 

that's some pretty neat stuff.
wish I knew about it when I still had an expresscard slot...

 

I got a flush fitting eSATA expresscard34 card from dealextreme and it works pretty well. Free international shipping too, although it's based in hong kong.

 

Avermedia AverTV Express Mini ATSC TV tuner fits flush in the ExpressCard34 slot. I've left mine in there since AUGUST of last year. No problems or issues. When it's time to fire up Media Player for some vegging out, a small COAX adapter plug clicks into a tiny jack at the end of the card. I'm running this under Windows 7 64bit.

Prior to that, I was considering a large capacity storage card but existing users were all claiming the speed wasn't so hot. I just saw another brand SSD ExpressCard claiming 115mbps read speeds, but reviews seem to point that it's hot. Literally. Temperature hot.

Any other useful ExpressCard devices out there?

 

Delock make quite a few...

 

Indeed the do. According to their website, they sell one. It's an 18-in-1 card reader. None of the others are flush fit.

Carter - Any chance of a more elaborate review of this product and some more photos. Really interested in this, but looks like it's hard to get outside of the US. Do you plug it into the coax in a hotel room, or do you carry around some sort of aerial? What's the software that you need to install like? I remember back in the day when Haupage were the market leader, their software was really bad and I could never get my TV tuner to work. Does it also pick up the free digital TV channels?

 

A brief operational write-up posted a week or so ago in this thread...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=460075

Three pictures posted in Am@z0n's listing, just search the ASIN number: B002HWRZ0C

Since you mentioned sourcing it outside the US, the question would be HOW FAR outside? The ASIN product I'm mentioning is specifically for North America where they are broadcasting high definition digital TV based on our ATSC standard.

Go search Wikipedia to find out the DTV broadcasting type used by other countries.

Avermedia makes a few other tuners tailored to specific regions. An ATSC tuner will definitely NOT work in Europe or Asia. In China for example, they're using DMB-TH.

Major metropolitan regions across the US broadcast high-definition programming freely -- supported by commercials. No different than the old NTSC analog days. The new ATSC signal is slightly more elusive though. It has problems when there are lots of things in its path (buildings, trees, walls, etc) If you can still manage to pull in 60-50% of the signal consistently, the picture quality will be every bit as pristine as a HDTV pulling a strong 80-100% signal.. that's the benefit of being digital. This was the weakpoint of the old analog signal -- picture quality was linearly related to the analog signal strength.

The Express Mini tuner includes a small clip-on telescoping rabbit-ear aerial. In reference to what I said above, the clip-on CAN be useful but only if largely unobstructed from the broadcast tower. It folds down into a compact package that's between the size of a lighter and a cellphone. I'm unlikely to use my aerial outside of my hometown simply because it'll require Windows Media Center go through a setup re-scanning the channels in a different US region. I might consider that only if I were forced to stay in a different city for an extended amount of time... but then again, it'd be more likely I have reliable broadband access to watch shows from Hulu. (yeah yeah, I know Hulu's not available outside the US)

Most hotels I've stayed at feed their proprietary cable system into the room's coax jack, so I never bothered to see how it plays with this tuner. My household coax is routed to the rooftop antenna, so my ATSC reception is strong and clear. (free broadcasts) ...around 40 channels of digital programming.

Go to the Avermedia.com website to see if they make a variation in your region. The drivers they provided for Windows 7 64bit installed with hardly any fuss. This in turn allowed Media Center to recognize the tuner during setup. Everything works very smoothly and integrates completely. Media Center on my notebook now has a TV category showing subheadings like Recorded TV, Guide, Live TV. The tuner card also brings FM radio reception to Media Center.


Long ago when I used a desktop computer, I installed a Hauppauge PCI TV tuner. Back then, Windows Media Center was a stand-alone OS I didn't upgrade to. The software that came with the Hauppauge tuner was pretty horrid and laggy even on my then-speedy 3.0ghz Pentium.

The Avermedia tuner combined with Windows 7 Media Center is a vastly improved experience by comparison.