BlackGold BGT3620 review

Thanks to the steady roll-out of Freeview HD, free-to-air high definition TV broadcasts are slowly creeping across the UK. If you fancy funneling those HD broadcasts through your rooftop aerial and into your Media Center PC, then BlackGold’s BGT3620 should go automatically to the top of your list. It’s the first dual-tuner Freeview HD card to hit the market.

Considering that it arrives in such a tiny black box, barely any bigger than that of a pair of sunglasses, BlackGold’s BGT3620 is absolutely feature-packed. This PCI Express x1 card has a single analogue tuner along with dual DVB-C (Cable) and dual DVB-T2 tuners. BlackGold also supplies half- and full-height PCI brackets, allowing the BGT3620 to squeeze into small form factor media PCs.

The provision of a video input is something of a rarity, the supplied adapter cable adding composite, component and S-Video inputs for hooking up external set-top boxes or older video devices. There’s no bundled software, though – we had to download drivers from BlackGold’s site, and there’s no documentation at all.

Luckily, aside from this, installing the BGT3620 is as simple as slotting it into a spare PCI Express slot. A single aerial input feeds both tuners, and Windows 7 Media Center’s setup pages take a few minutes to scan for all the available Freeview and Freeview HD channels.

Signal quality from our nearest transmitter (Crystal Palace) was strong and glitch-free. We had no problems recording two HD programs simultaneously – CPU usage on our elderly 2GHz Core 2 Duo system barely edged into double figures – and both the 720P HD images and 5.1 surround sound of the Freeview HD channels were impressive. By comparison, Freeview’s standard definition broadcasts look and sound distinctly rough around the edges.

The lack of instructions did cause some problems, however, and initially thwarted our attempts to get the video inputs working. An email to BlackGold’s Technical Support revealed a solution: instructing Windows Media Center that we were connecting a set-top box, rather than just installing a standard TV tuner card, allowed Media Center to access the BlackGold’s S-Video, Composite and Component inputs.

The video inputs then appear as a single extra channel in the guide listings, with the BlackGold automatically switching to the active video input. The only downside is that if you were hoping to connect an older games console, Media Center seems insistent on buffering a second or two of the video feed, making it impossible to accurately control the on-screen action. Admittedly, though, the slight delay isn’t so much of an issue when integrating a set-top box into a Media Center setup, and also makes it possible to offload recordings from other DVRs.

There’s also the nagging issue of missing guide listings for the HD channels. This, however, is a limitation common to any DVB-T2 card, as the HD channel guide listings are encrypted. Thankfully, there’s a simple solution at hand: the freely downloadable Guide Tool makes it possible to add listings from Media Center’s database of unencrypted sources, and we used Virgin TV’s Media Center listings during our month-long test without any problems.

With only two DVB-T2 tuners currently on the market – BlackGold’s BGT3620 and Hauppauge’s PCTV 290e – those looking to add Freeview HD broadcasts to their Media Center PC don’t have a great deal of choice. As BlackGold’s BGT3620 is the only card to boast twin DVB-T2 tuners, it currently stands in a league of its own. Those wanting a simple plug-and-play option will be better served by Hauppauge’s single-tuner USB stick, but BlackGold’s BGT3620 takes pole position as the current card of choice for PC media enthusiasts.