Alltek Shifts TV Tuner to Monitor

A new twist on melding TV and PC is being offered by Alltek Vision, which has released a tuner designed to turn your monitor into a television.

The Nu-View 1024 PC-to-TV converter system is available this week from Alltek's Web site, priced at $170. With it, you can stretch the use of your monitor, repurposing it as a TV. ViewSonic offers similar products.

Basic Setup

When you set up the Nu-View, you unplug your monitor from your PC and plug it into the Nu-View (it works with both CRT and LCD monitors). Then you plug the Nu-View into your system's video adapter.

When you use your PC, the video signal passes through Nu-View and on to your monitor. When you're watching TV, the computer is not involved.

Of course, you also have to plug the Nu-View into some sort of video source. The device's 125-station cable-ready television tuner takes the standard coaxial cable from your local cable company. It can also accept antenna input, and has both composite and S-Video inputs for video devices such as VCRs and DVD players.

Take a Look

The television image comes through at the standard VGA resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. While this may seem pathetic by computer standards, it's about as good as a standard TV gets, and all that a standard TV signal can use.

Alltek Vision does not offer HDTV support. Nor does the Nu-View take advantage of a monitor's superior resolution to better display wide-screen DVDs, the way a PC's DVD drive and playback software do. So if you want to watch DVDs on your monitor, you're better off with the basic DVD capabilities on an equipped PC.

To the Nu-View, your PC is just another daisy on the chain--and it is not directly involved with its work. The good news is that setting up the Nu-View doesn't involve installing software. You don't have to worry that one of the Nu-View drivers will break a piece of Windows, because there are no Nu-View drivers.

The bad news is that your computer has no access to the Nu-View's TV signal. You can't use the device to help you record or alter TV programs.

The Nu-View doesn't appear to have any advantages over a conventional TV set. However, it does give a monitor double duty, so it can at least save space.