Trek ThumbDrive Tuner

By Darius Chang, CNET Asia
Jul 10, 2006

The good: Excellent reception; available with up to 4GB of mass storage; able to set scheduled recording.

The bad: No remote control; unable to access mass storage in TV tuner mode and vice versa.

The bottom line: One of the first USB digital video broadcasting-terrestrial (DVB-T) devices in the market with onboard storage capability, the Trek ThumbDrive Tuner offers excellent reception in a handy form factor. All it really needs is a remote control.

Estimated street price:	S$140 (US$103.08) (512MB)
	S$160 (US$117.80) (1GB)

Editors' note: Due to a change in launch prices, the review has been amended to reflect the revision. The rating has therefore changed from 7 to 8.

With the price of entry-level notebooks steadily dropping, consumers have been finding it more economical to purchase a laptop instead of a stand-alone portable DVD player for their mobile entertainment needs. Now, the boob tube has made its way into your portable with the help of USB DVB-T devices.

Did you know? Digital broadcasts offer high-quality video with a greater reception threshold, hence one does not require a strong signal for acceptable picture quality. Weak signals or interference will result in fuzzy pictures from analog signals, which manifests in DVB-T broadcasts as skipped frames or pixelated images.