AV Labs are not a big force in the TV tuner game, but they enter the market, ready to fight for their slice of the pie. The AV LABS Digital TV Tuner For Mac and PC (AVL683) comes bundled with The Tube and goes for $149, distributed by the good folks at Audion. andytlr takes it for a spin for all you lovely TV watchers out there.

If you’ve never used a PVR or a TV tuner on a computer before, it changes the way you watch TV. Easy recording, an electronic program guide (EPG) and my favorite, time shifting. At our house no important bits of a show are missed because someone was talking over them. Barely any ads are watched and shows aren’t missed. You watch what you want, when you want. We pause the TV on the channel we’re going to watch while we make dinner so we have a big buffer to skip over the ads or sport at the end of the news. It really is brilliant.

The AV LABS Digital TV Tuner (AVL683) is black, the shape of most thumb drives and just a little bit bigger. It comes with a remote, which I pointed at every conceivable part of the tuner and couldn’t get to work. But, I imagine it’s just the one that came with mine. That’s about all there is to it. From here on in, this review isn’t really about the hardware. It’s a digital TV tuner and thankfully, it tunes digital TV.

e·quinux’s The Tube is the software is comes with. I started using EyeTV (a competitor) back in 2004 and it is excellent software, so The Tube has a lot to live up to. But The Tube is very, very nice.

As expected, the little included aerial only picked up SBS, thankfully the Helvetica documentary was on. Dance Theatre Of Harlem came on next, so it was time to plug in the roof aerial. Because I’d scanned for channels with the included aerial I had to rescan. It took me quite a while to work this out. I couldn’t find any rescan button anywhere. I finally worked out that you can setup different locations, one for home and one for that seedy motel work always gets you to stay at. So, I added a location and I was able to scan for channels again. Uhhh, the ABC is playing VLF football.

At this point I noticed that two applications had been installed, The Tube and Media Central. So I opened the latter. Initially it looks like a media center, but it crashed. This happened every time I tried opening it, so lets just forget I ever found that and go back to The Tube.

The app supports the excellent IceTV EPG or the inferior EPG that comes in over the magical wires. It’s layed out vertically and by hour. If you’ve used IceTV before, it looks similar. There’s a search function and setting a program to record is as simple as clicking a little circle. The details of the selected show are always visible, which is nice.

There’s a library for all your recordings and EPG info is stored with each one. Exporting is as simple as right clicking. There’s very simple options for exporting that are all focused on Mac users. iPod, iPhone, Apple TV and iMovie. The first three will export optimised for your specific device, and they can automatically add the recording to iTunes. The iMovie option exported as a .dv file, which is perfect for not only iMovie but also Toast if you want to put your recordings onto a DVD, how quaint.

My partner was away last Thursday when Q&A was on. This show, more than any other, has me yelling at the TV and debating with anyone in the room. Alas, I was alone and didn’t have anyone to complain and bitch to. I ended up letting it out on Twitter but, with The Tube that wouldn’t have been necessary because of ‘Talk’. Talk puts you in a chat room with other people watching the same show as you. This is a really cool idea and I imagine it would be great when popular show was on.

That’s about it. It’s a TV Tuner that tunes Digital TV and an application that is incredibly simple to use and looks great. The only real downside was that the remote doesn’t work, but as I said, that is probably just the one I got. If you’re on the road a lot and want digital TV on your laptop, or if you’re setting up a HTPC, it’s worth a look.