Digital Lifestyle > All Reviews > Hardware > Multimedia > Broadway 2T review

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 Broadway 2T review

A promising network TV tuner – marred by poor software support

Cliff Joseph

Manufacturer: PCTV Systems
Manufacturer: PCTV Systems
Pros: Wireless streaming of live TV; twin tuners; easy to set up
Cons: Expensive; no recording software for Macs or iOS
Price: €199 (£180 from Amazon)
We rate this 3 out of 5.Star rating:

PCTV Systems makes a wide range of TV tuner products for PC users, and the Broadway 2T is one of their first forays into the Mac and iOS market.

The compact device is neatly designed – it looks like a small wireless router, as it has two aerials that provide wireless networking capabilities. It also has an Ethernet port, along with two Freeview TV tuners and additional inputs for Composite and S-video signals as well.

You simply plug your TV aerial into the Broadway 2T and then use its Ethernet interface to connect it to your home network. While the initial setup process requires an Ethernet connection, you can switch to wireless once that’s done, and the Broadway 2T can then stream the live TV signal to any device on your home network. It has two separate tuners, so it can stream different channels to two different devices simultaneously. Picture quality is generally good.

You don’t need any special software or apps to use the Broadway 2T. It streams the live TV signal through a web browser, which means that you can simply use Safari on any Mac or iOS device – or any browser on a PC too – to watch TV.

The Broadway 2T streams live TV around your home network

Everything up to this point is very easy and Mac-like. Unfortunately, things get messy when you start to delve a bit deeper. There’s a remote access option that allows you to view TV over the internet, but this requires you to adjust the port settings on your broadband router. That could be confusing for non-technical users, and the help files on the PCTV website weren’t very helpful.

Our biggest issue with the Broadway 2T, though, is that it only allows you to watch live TV as it is being broadcast. There’s no option for Mac or iOS users to record shows to watch whenever it suits them. There is a recording program called TV Center supplied with the Broadway 2T, but this runs on Windows PCs only.

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