MCE TV Tuner Roundup: Featuring ATI's Theater 550 & NVIDIA's NVTV
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 12, 2005 6:26 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
First Place: ATI TV Wonder Elite
For just about a year now, we've been hearing about ATI's Theater 550 chip, the successor to the highly successful Theater 200 used in the eHome Wonder. The Theater 550 was a bit of a let down in that it seemed a lot like a new release of old technology. What we wanted to see was a hardware MPEG-4 encoder from ATI and what we got instead was the promise of the best hardware MPEG-2 encoder ever. Although it's not the promise we wanted, ATI did deliver exactly what they set out to do.
The most noticeable feature of the TV Wonder Elite was that all of the text box issues, which we saw in the competing cards, were gone.
A clean picture and note that there are no issues around the text boxes.
You can't get totally sharp text off of a SD signal, but you get text that's very legible and artifact-free with the TV Wonder Elite.
Upon closer investigation, the image quality of the TV Wonder Elite is better in many little ways compared to the competition here. The color reproduction is much more true. There are much lower levels of noise and you can even see detail in actors on the screen. Compared to the second place Hauppauge card, the differences are much more subtle, but in back-to-back comparisons, you do notice differences between the two cards. The Hauppauge does appear to have higher levels of color saturation, but the TV Wonder Elite seems to produce a more "correct" image.
ATI TV Wonder Elite
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250
Ignoring the differences in border colors (the video feed in the center is still the same), the TV Wonder Elite offers more accurate color reproduction.
As slight as those differences may be, given the price parity between the Hauppauge and the TV Wonder Elite, we give the nod to ATI here.
What the TV Wonder Elite doesn't do, however, is the type of improvement in image quality that ATI's marketing material would have you believe; the biggest reason being that SD cable signals are simply not good enough for those types of improvements to be seen. The TV Wonder Elite isn't perfect, while it is still susceptible to the quality of your cable feed, but out of the competitors here, it's as good as it gets.
ATI's Remote Wonder Plus (left) vs. a standard MCE remote (right)
The retail TV Wonder Elite ships with ATI's new Remote Wonder Plus, a much improved remote control design over previous ATI remotes. Unfortunately, the Remote Wonder Plus will not function as a MCE remote. You'll still have to shell out the $30 for one of those if you're building a MCE machine.
Although we have specifically decided not to focus on software bundles (given that the premise of this roundup is finding a TV tuner card for a MCE system), ATI does ship the TV Wonder Elite with a copy of CyberLink's PowerCinema with an ATI skin. At first glance, the ATI Edition of PowerCinema looks a lot like a red version of the MCE interface. However, as soon as you start to use it, you realize its shortcomings. The interface is extremely slow to respond compared to MCE and it still features no integrated program guide, which renders it useless as a serious PVR tool by today's standards. As a standalone TV tuner, the TV Wonder Elite's bundle leaves much to be desired, but as a companion to Windows XP Media Center Edition, ATI has released the best quality tuner on the market from what we've seen.
The biggest drawback of ATI's TV Wonder Elite is its price point - between $140 and $160, the TV Wonder Elite is ridiculously expensive for a SD TV tuner. But if you want the best, it's your only option.
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Tiorapatea - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
That all changed when Microsoft released Windows XP Media Center Edition. Bringing the first true 10-foot UI to the PC...Whilst I don't generally like to nitpick too much, I really do find the lack of attention given on this site to Linux solutions a bit puzzling. Linux really isn't all that hard to get going, particularly for enthusiasts. And Anandtech does aim, I believe, to cater for enthusiasts.
Tiorapatea - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
trey007 - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
I have the ATI HDTV Wonder, but I haven't built nor bought a MCE PC because I'm waiting for more confirmation that it will work with my HDTV Card.Also, if I'm not mistaken, it comes with a standard TV Tuner as well, so this article confused me when it said I would need both.
Kishkumen - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
Something to keep in mind, if you have any thoughts at all of using MythTV at some point instead of MCE, you probably want to stay as far away from the ATI cards as possible. Hauppaugue cards have very good drivers, support and knowledge base for both MythTV and Linux in general. ATI TV cards... mmm... not so much... Then again, there are already HDTV based Linux cards with pretty good OTA and QAM capability fully supported under MythTV. You may not even need a crappy analog card. Although a PVR-150 will probably be useful for a while with those obscure analog holdouts on the far end of your cable listings.ChiefNutz - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
Finally, Someone did a comparison review with several cards!!! I've been waiting for ever to see tests run against that ATI Elite & the Hauppauge / NVTV forever.. I do agree with #19 though... but i thought MCE 2005 doesn't support mpeg 4 anyways.. Thanks anadtech for fullfilling my wishes!!! yesoverclockingoodness - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
#24 (Cygni): I agree with your comments, but I disagree with your ideas behind AnandTech. AnandTech is a business, and a successful one at that. If I am not mistaken, AnandTech makes at least $1.2 million a year from ad revenue.And for Anand and his editors, this is a full time. It's not a hobby anymore. :)
BikeDude - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
So... Which one of these cards features Win64 drivers...?--
Rune, soon to enter a TV-free reality...
Cygni - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
Im glad I get to battle through 30 "OMG U LEFT OUR PRODUCT X, THE WHOLE REVIEW = WORTHLESS" posts in every single AnandTech comments thread.A) The PVR-250 Retail is $140 on Newegg.
B) The 150 ISNT IN STOCK at Newegg or Mwave, and has barely been on the market at all. Again, it takes time to write a review and do all the hours of testing required (especially when you realize that THIS IS A HOBBY to everyone who writes the articles). If the card isnt available, or has barely hit the market, how is AnandTech going to have it for a review started weeks ago unless somebody sends one?
C) And ya... if it aint on Newegg, Mwave, or ZoomZipFly, i dont count it as a real price/availability. ;) Call me crazy, haha.
Cant believe how much some people complain about a free website run by volunteers just trying to help people out...
BUBKA - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
Lets Go...... Mountaineers!!!
Googer - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
One of nVIDIA's former Executives used to be a big wig engineer at LSI. Now can any one tell my why nVIDIA's solution is using LSI's silicon? Hmmmm....