AutumnWave OnAir GT HDTV Receiver Review

The box contains the unit itself, a USB cable, video breakout cable (for recording external video sources), a full-sized remote control, telescoping antenna, a suede-like carrying pouch, driver CD and quick-start guide.

The unit itself looks very simple.  Several LEDs on the front show you the status of the unit, but they are not labelled so you really don’t know what they mean (I assume power, signal, and aux).  The back of the unit has 3 ports: one for the antenna, one for the break-out video input, and a USB cable.  There is now power switch, as the unit receives power from the USB cable itself.

Once connected the unit was very easy to set up: it was actually very painless, especially considering the hours it usually takes to get other tuners we’ve tested up and working.

The AutumnWave OnAirGT USB HDTV tuner outperformed every other PC-based HDTV tuner we compared it to, which picked up more stations with higher gain in the same spot.  If you are visiting a densely-populated area then you’ll probably never notice, but it makes a difference once you start to get on the outskirts of a city.

Fitting a “standard” HDTV tuner into a portable box is a challenge, and because of this the OnAirGT Solution is much larger (and therefore not as portable) as some of the “inferior” stick tuners.   It is odd that AutumnWave claims this box has superior technology to other “stick” tuners and then throws in a very simple low-gain antenna.  We had much better results when we used the antenna included with Pinnacle’s HDTV Pro stick (which has a magnetic base and longer telescopic reach).