'KWORLD TVBox 1440 in Uruguay' Technology  

KWORLD TVBox 1440 in Uruguay

Lee from Pocitos -

One of the challenges of moving into an unfurnished apartment was making it comfortable to live in without breaking the bank. Since consumer electronics tends to be a bit expensive here. 20" LCD TV starts at about US$550. I had the brilliant idea of using one of my nice LCD computer monitors for a TV. I never have much luck wiht TV Capture Cards... the software is always funky and the image sometimes of dubious quality, or the picture lags a few seconds behind the audio.. plus your computer always has to be turned on. I found plenty of options for TV to Monitor converts on the web and ebay. They almost all indicated they were for the NTSC TV system and Uruguay uses PAL-M. I emailed one manufacturer and they said their system worked with PAL-M. A seller on ebay insisted it was only NTSC. I didn't want to risk buying something that didn't work. That manufacturer wouldn't tell me if they had any distributors in Uruguay, even though they had very quickly answered my question about NTSC/PAL. Looking around computer stores in Uruguay I didn't see any such boxes, just loads of TV Capture cards. I asked at TFK (Guayaqui 3382, ph: 708-4765) and they said it was definiately available and probably under US$100. They would look into it and call me back. After not having gotten a call back I stopped in again and was told not possible for a "TV Box" and have me the price for some memory I wanted. After checking memory prices I went back to TFK to tell them I wanted the memory and they said they though they could get the TV Box and would call me. I didn't hear anything for a couple days and stopped by again. They said yes they can get the TV Box and it would be US$120. I said if it would be less than a week I wanted it. They called back in an hour and said they HAD IT and I could pick it up. Turns out to be the Kworld TV Box 1440 (which all the ebay listings, kworlds website, the box, and the onscreen menu all say is NTSC -- yet it works perfectly with the PAL-M system). It works greats. A cable is included so you don't have to mess with cables to change between your computer and the TV. I have it hooked up to a RCA Home Theater System so the sound is superb (though it seems to have a built in speaker). The "buy it now" prices on ebay range from $58.95 to $80, so the $120 wasn't a bad price taking into account shipping and import taxes (which would have been 60%). I was happy TFK really dug into finding the item for me. Trackbacks Trackback specific URI for this entry No trackbacks.

Comment #1 TV Addict from watching television -

That is an awesome story, Lee. I'm really glad it worked out for you. Now assure me that you had some sort of TV beforehand. I couldn't live without TV. Just couldn't.

Now that I've opened this door, what kind of programming do you have in Uruguay?

Comment #2 Lee from Pocitos -

Yeah we had a furnished apartment... which meant furniture, TV, silverware, lamps, light fixtures... moving to an unfurniture apartment which has as close to nothing as you can get.

We have regular cable tv... well.. for a couple months digital cable, which really sucks as some channels are on analog cable, some on digital and they said in March all would be on digital, which hasn't happened yet (I don't think), but they did remove at least one of the channels from the analog line up and on digital the audio track is significantly delayed from the video track. So once the contract is up I'll get directtv.

The cable line up is pretty much like you'd get in the usa, except no ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN Espanol rather than CNN, BBC, local channels from Uruguay and Argentina. Most of the cable channels are english with spanish subtitles, but older movies on some channels are in spanish.

Comment #3 ribbon from around town -

I never would have thought of using a computer monitor. It is cool that it worked out for you. Even here I am not a big fan of cable. I prefer my direct tv over anything else.

Comment #4 TV Addict from watching television -

Has your cable situation improved, Lee? Did you get all digital yet? Or did you bite the bullet and switch to DirectTV? Would you get the major networks in Uruguay with Direct?

Comment #5 Lee from Pocitos -

Very soon they are going to never never land... it seems they have all the channels now.

They also have a lot of channels that don't have service unless you pay extra. I started deleting them as it is silly to scroll through 50 channels of nothing.

Its a pain to delete them as the delete menu doesn't show the channel or tell you whether you receive a given channel. On the first round I deleted all the PPV channels as that was each and got rid of about 20 channels of nothing.

Then my wife told me that the digital cable wasn't working. I asked why not. She said the channel she wanted to watch wasn't there. I asked what channel she said 96. I said, no that is 76 now that I deleted the PPV.

Once I delete some more it will be something different yet....

Though I probably won't delete any more as we probably won't turn on the digital box again.

The volume control is also funky, or maybe independent for each channel, but it always ends up lowered when I change channels.

Comment #6 Santiago Torres from Montevideo, Uruguay -

Just a detail: the Uruguayan television system is PAL-N, not PAL-M. PAL-N is used in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. PAL-M is used in Brazil.

The Uruguayan government has just chosen the European system DVB for digital television.

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