Ok, I have bought my first SDR dongle...

[VK4ADC]

Ok, I have bought my first SDR dongle via eBay and have started to have a play with it. I figured it was time for me to play the catch-up game with the newer RF technology so why not jump in at the deep end

It is one of the blue cased ones : USB 2.0 Digital DVB-T SDR+DAB+FM HDTV TV Tuner Receiver Stick RTL2832U+R820T2. It's nominal features are..

R820T2+RTL2832U chip;
It support SDR,DAB,FM and DVB-T
Watch and record digital terrestrial TV on PC or Laptop.
Full DVB-T bandwidth reception (6/7/8 MHz).
Digital TV recording and playback as DVD quality.
Support for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/WIN7;
Support both MPEG-2, MPEG-4(H.264) encoding;
and came with BlazeTV software.

I have followed a few Google results and installed the Zadig drivers, ExtIO-RTL support and the HDSDR software as well and the thing seems to receive. It looks like I will need to find and download the extra libraries to make the rtlsdr_scan-windows-32bit software run (Win7/32bit OS) before I get the thing to work as a pseudo spectrum analyser - but that is one of the eventual aims. I will eventually try to get Spektrum software running but it looks like it is only for Win7(+)/64 bit.

I do have to cut the coax lead for the small antenna supplied and re-terminate it in an SMA male so that the dongle is usable on a "proper" antenna or test setups but that is a minor task.

What other software have you tried that will do spec-an functionality, 32bit, XP/Win7/+ etc ???
Feedback please.

73 Doug VK4ADC