AverMedia launches SnugTV: Stream Live TV to any PC over the web

Filed under: Internet, Video

AverMedia makes a line of TV tuners that let you watch analog and digital broadcasts on a PC. Now the company is making it (somewhat) easy to watch live and recorded TV even when you're away from your computer with a TV tuner.

AverMedia's new placeshifting solution is called SnugTV, and here's how it's supposed to work. You download and install the SnugTV client on a PC that has a supported AverMedia TV tuner. Then you can login to the SnugTV web site from any Windows PC to:

1. Stream live TV programs from your home PC to a remote PC
2. Schedule recordings remotely using an electronic program guide
3. Watch previously recorded programs

Unfortunately, the software is still in the early testing phases and I experienced a few problems when I tried it on my Windows 7 machine with an AverTV HD Duet TV tuner, even though it's a fairly recent product from AverMedia. While the software recognized my video card, I was unable to scan for channels. Technically, my TV tuner isn't on the list of supported cards though, so your results may vary.

It's also worth pointing out that I have the US version of this TV tuner, while a similar European model is supported. So it's possible that AverMedia is still rolling out support for the US.

I also received a message saying that even if SnugTV had recognized my TV tuner, I would have had limited ability to stream content because of the way my router was configured. Blogger Dave Zatz had the same problem when he tried to set up SnugTV on his computer, although he didn't actually have an AverMedia tuner.

Fortunately, you can still test the software using a couple of demo tuners, so I was able to stream some Russian TV successfully during my testing.

Still, SnugTV shows some promise. The user interface is nice and the place-shifting and remote scheduling functionality could be a nice value-added proposition for customers that pick up AverMedia cards. If the company can work out the kinks, SnugTV could provide a good reason to choose an AverMedia tuner over the competition: something I never thought I'd say about TV tuner software. Generally third party applications for TV tuners are much better than anything that comes with the hardware.

AverMedia launches SnugTV: Stream Live TV to any PC over the web originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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