Broadcom BCM970015 Crystal HD Video Decoder Mini PCI-E Adapter 1080p AW-VD920H

Installed this in to an Atom Based all-in-one PC using the WiFi slot. The PC has Atom D525, which is pretty useless by most counts. But after installing the card (I had to remove one of the screws to secure it to the motherboard) and downloading software from Broadcom "Crystal HD" I see no issues playing youtube content. The PC as a whole is still quite slow, but at least video play back is not an issue. I opened up the computer after playing a few videos to see how hot the chip got and it was only warm (could have been other components). This has given new use to an otherwise obsolete computer.

I have a 1st generation Apple TV. I installed Crystalbuntu via STM Labs and was impressed with the video quality using the pre-installed graphic card. However, after replacing the standard with this product, the picture quality has improved greatly on my 52" LCD. The process was simple: removed rubber pad on bottom of Apple TV, unscrewed bottom panel, disconnected wifi leads from stock wifi card, inserted new Broadcom card, replaced screws and plugged all the cables back in. Simple! I can now watch full 1080P Blu-Ray movies on my 1st generation Apple TV. For the price of the card, it was a no-brainer.

I bought 2 of these for the 2 AppleTV Gen. 1's (silver) I have in my home; with each, I have Crystalbuntu with XBMC loaded onto them. Installing Crystal HD cards was so easy; a small tip: to get to the screws from the bottom of the ATV1, you don't really need to peel off the entire rubber footing to access them -- just peel back each corner carefully till you see the screws; it keeps the overall integrity of the ATV intact. Anyway, once installed, my Apple TV has become even more of a pleasure than it had already been. Before installing the CrystalHD cards, while I could still use XBMC, when I tried to access online videos that were at 720/1080p, the video was choppy, stuttering and making the whole experience disappointing to some degree. After installing the cards int he Apple TV -- which, by the way, is super easy to do; I suggest looking online for a video tutorial to help you along; for suggestions, leave a comment here and I will get back to you on that if you want -- online videos run so smoothly; and everything just seemed a little snappier too. I am sure the same is the case for playing one's own personal blu-ray quality movies, but since I don't have any, I can't truly attest to it; now that I have these cards installed, the idea of owning a couple of those now seems a bit more appealing. :) All and all, I feel I made a great decision on purchasing this, and I think you will too. It is a nice, relatively cheap, incredibly easy way to upgrade your silver AppleTV to bring it new life.

My tiny atom-based build with tons of ram but on chip intel graphics stank at streaming video. It works great after popping this in and downloading the drivers from Broadcom. Didn't help problems with games that do not play well with intel graphics, but Netflix and Dishanywhere are working great.

I couldn't get it to work when tested on a couple Windows 10 PCs with MiniPCI slots wired for PCI (not USB). Driver installed fine. Checked all over the web to see if other drivers were available. It didn't take the load of the CPU for any video task with chrome, firefox, internet explorer, VLC, Kodi, and others. Broadcom status app never showed it activated once. I imagine it would have worked fine with Windows 7 yet that's not acceptable for me.

The WIFI adapter in my Foxcon NT-535 is a mini PCI-express card. I took it out and replaced it with the HB-VD920 hoping to improve video performance. When I brought up the Windows 7 Device manager, I found that I had two Crystal HD devices. I did a little investigation and found references to the fact that the NT-535 in fact has a Crystal HD on the MoBo. The device manager indicated that one of the devices wasn't working correctly. This could simply be that the Crystal HD doesnt' play well when there are two or more installed. Or it might be that the two devices require different drivers... I can't say for sure what was wrong. I took the HB-VD920 out of its slot and the device manager reported that the MoBo device was working. Since I can't remove the MoBo Device, I can't say whether the mini PCI-e would work alone... or not. I don't have another PC that has a mini-PCI-e slot... so I can't test it. In any event... I also found that you need video codec's that support the Crystal HD device. It turns out that many players come with their own codec pack... and don't have support for the Crystal HD. However, Windows 7 does support the Crystal HD, so if your player uses the system codec's... Bob's your uncle. So far, I've found that Boxee and VLC don't support the system codec's. I think that VLC may be modified so as to load the Crystal HD decoder... and Boxee has a setting to turn on hardware decoding... But in both cases, the software as it is installed by default doesn't make use of the Crystal HD. MediaPortal however uses the system codec's. You just have to tell MediaPortal to use the right decoder. So... On my NT-535, any video that the Crystal HD supports comes out very nice... smooth playback, and full resolution. BTW... there is a slick little tool from Broadcom that one can use to see if the Crystal HD is actually being used. Attempting to figure out the magic of codec configuration.... is way too complicated and fraught with guess work. The tool is simple... if the Crystal HD is being used... the light appears. If it's not... it doesn't.

Pretty sure this is a great item but...I waited to long to install it and the item was DOA. I guess that is my fault. Just make sure you test the item when you receive it. I wish defective items were caught before shipping.