1. I get poor reception from my local cable provider with Dell Dimension 8400 and Angel MPEG Device.

Originally Dell 8400 MCE was shipped with version 2.21 of the Angel MPEG Device driver. That version had a bug that prevented MCE from properly detecting the type of cable service provided in certain areas. As a result MCE was picking the wrong channel-to-frequency table and therefore missing most of the channels and showing bad quality on the channels it found.

This bug was fixed in version 2.34 (download USB or PCI drivers).

After downloading and installing the latest driver please make sure to go through setup in MCE as follows:


With the new driver MCE should be able to recognize the correct channel line-up and give the best picture quality.

2. How can I use the Angel device to burn my home videos onto DVD?

Update: Sonic MyDVD version 6.1 or higher (do not use version 8) now supports both Angel PCI and Angel USB devices. You can use this program to capture a file from any input and directly burn a DVD. (For links to this application, go to Applications).

NOTE: If you are using an older version of Sonic MyDVD, please see instructions below for creating a DVD.

To create a Video DVD disc you can use Sonic MyDVD version 5 shipped preinstalled on Dell Dimension 8400 (with MCE). Unfortunately that version is not yet capable of capturing video directly using Angel. So as a workaround Dell suggests to use MCE to capture your videos into files (*.dvr-ms) and then import those files into MyDVD for editing and burning.

In order to select the input on Angel that you will use with your VCR or Camcorder, you will need to go through "Settings" -> "TV" -> "Set Up TV Signal" and manually choose the "Set top box" option and then select "Composite" or "S-Video" depending on your connection. Here is the alternative way of selecting the input.

After MCE is setup, use the "Record" (red) button to start recording.

All recorded files will be located in this folder:

and will have name like this:

Then simply import those files into MyDVD, do your editing and burn it to DVD.

3. Where can I find the Users Guide?

Angel TV Tuner devices Users Guide is embedded into the Windows "Help and Support" pages installed on every machine shipped by Dell with Angel. It is easy to find by searching for "Angel" phrase.

Same guides are available on-line from Dell Support site:

5. I'm having problems running Angel USB device on a non-Dell PC.

The Angel USB product is a high power USB device. It is possible that the USB ports on some PCs may not be capable of providing the required power. If you see the message, "Power Surge on the Hub port" when you plug-in the Angel USB device or if you notice performance issues, there are a few things you can do to resolve this:

1. Use a shorter USB cable (3-4 feet in length) with thicker power wires (AWG 20 or 22). The 1m ULTIMA cable is an example of a preferred cable.
2. If using a different USB cable does not help - use a powered Hub. Make sure the Hub comes with a power supply and is USB 2.0 compliant. (Even with a powered hub, a shorter, thicker USB cable is preferred)