I was recently working in my office and made the decision to try and use my AirTV OTA USB tuner on my PC again. I had tried a few months back and couldn’t get it to work. I had soon a few forums here and there that made it seem like it wasn’t possible.
I bought the AirTV back in 2017 when it was first released. At the time it came with 3 months of Sling TV for free. I was also an early adopter of Sling. The AirTV was interesting because they’d integrated OTA TV into the Sling interface using this OTA adapter.
Spoiler Alert: I got it working…
Problem to Solve
I have two old 32″ TVs thatI’m using as monitors. I also have a coaxial cable run from my antenna to my desk. I wanted to be able to watch the news and not use up an entire monitor. Let’s get started!
Equipment I’m Using:
- AirTV OTA USB Tuner (The Original version pictured above)
- Thinkpad E530 8 GB ram 500GB HDD Windows 10 Pro
- Outdoor Antenna
- PVR Tuner Software
Getting the USB Tuner Working
First, let’s get the USB tuner working. As it turns out, the AIRTV turner is a Hauppauge- tuner in disguise. Their website has the drivers for Windows 10 available here: https://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support.html#win10 I used the Xbox One TV tuner (ATSC) driver.
- Connect the tuner to your PC’s USB port.
- Go through the prompts to install the driver.
- Reboot your PC.
- Once complete go to your Device Manager to check that the device is recognized. You may need to connect and disconnect the adapter. It should show up under Human Interface Devices.
Installing and Setting up the Tuner Software
Next, we need to install some tuner software. For this tutorial we will using NextPVR. Go to this link and download the latest version: https://www.nextpvr.com/download.html
Follow the prompts and install the software. This should be a straight forward process.
To set up your tuner and scan for channels, you’ll need to open up the settings. You can do this by right-clicking anywhere in the window. Be sure that your antenna is connected at this point.
- In settings, go to the “Devices” and choose the ATSC Hauppauge tuner. At the bottom of the page select “Device Setup“.
On the next screen choose “Scan“, Go make a sandwich, it will scan up to channel 69.
Once the software has finished scanning click “OK“. You can click “OK” in the Device Setup Window also. You’ll get a message “Would you like to do an EPG update? Click “Yes“. This will update the guide information.
2. Go to the Decoders section and setup your decoders. This is what my settings are. Your results may vary. I used this tutorial: https://matthill.me.uk/tutorials/install-windows-10-dvd-player-free/
There is also more information here: http://www.nextpvr.com/decoders.html
Click “OK” to close the settings window.
3. On the Main menu select TV guide. Choose a channel and double click under the current time column. Click “Watch“. That’s it!
Conclusion
This tuner is apparently the HVR-850 USB OTA Tuner. I could not get this to work with the Raspberry PI at all. I wanted to use it for my Plex Server. If anyone did get it working let me know in the comments! Thanks for reading!
