A decent DVB-T2 tuner at a reasonable price.

When I first started exploring Chinese online stores, I already wanted to buy a tuner for receiving digital TV broadcasts. But since using these tuners could cause problems here in our country, I didn't want to take the risk.
When I was offered another product to review, I finally couldn't resist and decided to give it a try.
If you'd like to hear the rest of the story and see photos of the outside and inside, read on.

I live in a city of one and a half million people and use over-the-air TV, not cable. I realize that may seem strange to some, especially since all the necessary cables for cable TV were installed in my apartment during the renovation.
But it just never happened. I was renovating, ran all the cables, brought them out to the landing by the utility cabinet, and even called a technician from the cable TV company. But the technician never showed up (whether he forgot or couldn't be bothered, it doesn't matter). Then I got busy, and it wasn't a priority anymore.
Anyway, I changed my mind about getting cable TV at home and put up a regular antenna outside the balcony. Fortunately, I'd wired things with that option in mind (and satellite TV too), so I decided not to get cable connected.

A few years went by, and I finally decided to try digital TV, especially since the encryption on the main TV channels was removed at the end of the summer.
Digital TV here is provided by Zeonbud. At first, broadcasts weren't encrypted, but after some time Zeonbud was “advised” to install equipment to encrypt the signal.
Presumably, this was done so people would have to buy set-top boxes for watching digital channels through this company alone.
At the end of this summer, the company was required to remove encryption from the national channels (I only found this out after ordering the tuner), which is good news.
I'm not going to claim that everything I've said above is 100% accurate, since I hadn't looked into these issues before. I'll just describe how things stand now.

That's enough background; let's get to the tuner itself.
As always, I'll start with the packaging. I won't post a photo of the parcel, since it contained more than just the tuner, and I don't think anyone would be interested anyway.

The tuner arrived in a fairly neat box with colorful printing, though that isn't particularly important.


One end is covered with icons highlighting the device's main features.


The bottom explains what the device is, what it's for, and what it can do.
It's all in clear English, so I won't translate it. It'll be clear enough later what everything is and what it's for.
Basically, everything checks out, except I couldn't find the four-digit LED display on the front panel. But in my opinion, the fewer indicators, the better. My satellite tuner had one, and it even annoyed me a little.


Inside are the tuner itself, the manual, and everything else.


The tuner comes with:
1. The tuner itself
2. Remote control
3. Power supply
4. IR receiver with a 3.5 mm jack
5. A small piece of 3M double-sided tape for attaching the IR receiver.
6. Audio/video cable
7. English-language manual.


The tuner itself is fairly compact, with a glossy black plastic case and a shiny trim around the top.
The case is neat and understated, but attracts dust like crazy. Protective films were stuck to the top, back, and front for shipping.
The case measures 127 × 88 × 31 mm, excluding the connectors.
The front has a red 3 mm LED indicating that the device is on, a connector for the IR receiver, and a USB port for flash drives.
There are ventilation holes on top.


On the back are the antenna socket (input only, unfortunately), an HDMI port, analog RCA audio/video connectors, and a 5 V power jack.


The bottom has perforations for better cooling, although in practice the device doesn't get particularly hot during use. Still, it can't hurt.
There's also a little sticker on the bottom. It's stuck on a bit crookedly, but in my opinion, even if it weren't there at all, nothing would change.


Since a review isn't a review without taking the device apart, I decided to see what's inside.
To get inside, remove the four porous rubber feet, which are attached with double-sided tape (the tape is thin, so it's best to remove them carefully). There are four screws underneath. That's all there is to disassembly.
The main processor is a fairly new (as far as I can tell) MSD7802.
The DDR2 512 Mb RAM chip is nt5tu32m16dg-ac
32 Mb flash memory: 25L3206E
Demodulator (if I've identified its function correctly, since I couldn't find a datasheet): msb1236c
The RF module, crystal, and voltage regulator.


While looking through the manual, I was surprised to find that it was actually for a more sophisticated device.


Curious about this, I took a closer look at the circuit board and found that, if I wanted to, I could even try making a few modifications to the device.
It comes with three RCA connectors, but there's room for a SCART connector on the circuit board and the back panel. I suspect you could try replacing the connector (perhaps adding a few components) to get component or RGB output, which might improve the picture a little when connecting it to an older TV.
I wasn't particularly interested in doing this at the time, even though I use a TV without digital inputs, but I'll probably have to get out the soldering iron and give it a try.


The remote is fairly simple, but they certainly didn't skimp on the buttons :)
It has navigation and direct channel-selection buttons, buttons for controlling video playback from a flash drive and the TimeShift mode, plus extra buttons for turning on subtitles and so on.


The remote takes two AAA batteries, which aren't included.
There's also a finger recess on the bottom. It's quite handy in practice; it's strange I haven't seen this before. A little karma point for the designer.


The power supply is nothing out of the ordinary: 5 V, 2 A maximum, with a 3.5 mm barrel plug.


Inside is a very ordinary budget design, although I've seen much worse examples with the same claimed specs (usually bundled with inexpensive tablets).
But it works and doesn't get very hot. The lack of an input filter is disappointing, though.


The circuit board has components on both sides, with a few more components and markings on the back.


The package includes an IR receiver and an audio/video cable (if you plan to use it, it's best to replace it with a better one).


I couldn't take the IR receiver apart without damaging it so badly that it couldn't be put back together. There was nothing interesting inside anyway: just a standard IR receiver (mounted with its top facing the cable) and a red LED that stays on whenever the device is plugged in.
By the way, there's no power switch on the device; it can only be turned off through the software.


That wraps up the hardware review. Let's move on to the software.

When you turn it on, you're prompted to select a language and location, then run an automatic channel scan.
By the way, the software's Russian localization is excellent; I didn't notice any glitches or errors.
There's a slight moiré pattern in the screenshots. The supplied cable is rather thin, and I had only the video connector plugged in, which caused some interference. The interference disappears when the other connectors are plugged in, but it's better to replace the cable with a higher-quality one.


During the initial setup, I selected Russian as the language and France as the country.
Russia and Ukraine aren't on the list, so I picked France simply because we used to have a Soviet-French broadcasting system here. Of course, that has nothing to do with digital TV.
Then I started scanning for channels.
I first tried using just a piece of wire, but it didn't work, so I had to connect an antenna. That worked fine: the tuner found all 32 channels broadcast digitally in our area.


I captured the image using a TV tuner with a Philips 7134 video chip. Resolution: 768x576 pixels.


The tuner found 18 free-to-air channels, 1 channel with no picture, 1 test channel, and 12 encrypted channels.
A major drawback of this tuner is that it has no slot for a pay-TV access card.
But if all you need is to catch the news on the national channels, this is more than enough. I was perfectly happy with it, since I'm not interested in the other channels anyway. Encrypted channels are marked with a dollar sign ($).


Many channels show descriptions of what's on now and what's coming up next.


As I mentioned above, the software localization is quite good. Credit to the developers.
Here are some screenshots of the tuner's menus.


Video standard and display mode selection.
In my case, switching between composite and component mode made no difference; the picture looked the same in both modes.
When you use the 3D function, the tuner splits the image into two screens, either horizontally or vertically. I doubt anyone will find this feature useful on this tuner, since 1080p mode is specified at just 50 Hz.


This window lets you start an automatic or manual scan, select a country, and enable power to the antenna cable.
However, the tuner supplies only 5 V, while almost all the antenna amplifiers I'm familiar with require 12 or 15 V, so I don't see much practical use for this feature. You'd need to find an antenna amplifier that runs on 5 V. Still, the feature is there, and it works.


The screen for selecting the time zone, auto power-off, and so on.


Everything in this window is pretty self-explanatory. I set the language to Russian everywhere and the audio to PCM; RAW is also available.


System settings and password screen. I didn't change anything here.


Device information.


Firmware update mode selection window.
You can update online or from a USB drive.
Since I haven't had any complaints about how the device works during use, I simply saw no reason to experiment with finding and installing firmware updates.
As they say, the best is the enemy of the good.


Settings for working with USB storage devices.
I left everything at the default settings.


After connecting a flash drive and selecting USB mode with the corresponding button on the remote, a selection menu appears. I think many users here will recognize it; there's nothing unusual about it.
When you select recording mode or TimeShift mode, the tuner creates a folder named HBPVR on the flash drive and saves either a video file with the .mts extension or a stream file with the .ts extension.
Both files play without any problems in a media player.
TimeShift works very well. The first time you press the corresponding button, there's a slight delay; after that, switching between pause and normal playback is instantaneous. My wife really liked this feature :)
Recording starts as soon as you press the button. When you turn it off, the tuner asks you to confirm that you want to stop recording.
The recording uses the following format:
Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 720x576 (15:11) 25.00fps [Video]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo [Audio]
Just in case, I made a short sample recording. Since YouTube re-encodes videos, I uploaded it to Yandex.


When testing video playback, the only problem came up when I tried to play these test clips:
Ducks.Take.Off.1080p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv
Ducks.Take.Off.2160p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv
The playback issue with the second clip didn't surprise me, but the first one was disappointing.
However, I had no problems playing various downloaded torrent videos labeled as 1080p.
The video shows interlacing. In this case, that's a quirk of capturing the video from the tuner on a computer; the issue doesn't occur when connected to a TV.
I didn't notice any stuttering either. If anyone wants me to test specific formats or files, I'd be happy to experiment, as long as you provide a link to the file.
The screenshot also shows how subtitles are displayed (if you've seen Avatar, you'll understand that the subtitles here show the translation).


Summary.
Pros
The tuner works perfectly.
Composite video output for connecting to older TVs.
Excellent Russian-language software.
I liked how the TimeShift and recording functions are implemented.
A reasonably convenient remote control.

Cons.
No slot for a conditional access card for encrypted channels.
Low quality of the included audio/video cable.
I could also list the constantly lit LED in the IR receiver as a downside, but that's a bit of a stretch. Some people might even like it, but I'm not one of them :)

In my opinion, if you need an inexpensive tuner for watching free-to-air channels and videos from a flash drive on a TV that doesn't have these features, this device should do the job. I liked the picture quality and ease of use. Whether to buy it is up to you.
After several days of use, I haven't encountered any glitches or freezes.
I'd be glad to hear suggestions for testing this tuner.

The tuner was provided free of charge by Gearbest for review and testing.
I did my best to give readers as much information about the product as possible.