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
Final Words
Without a doubt, our two favorites from this review are Hauppauge's WinTV PVR-250 and ATI's TV Wonder Elite, with the overall win going to ATI for the TV Wonder Elite. If you're buying a card for your MCE system today, the TV Wonder Elite is the one to choose. Or if you already have a MCE machine and you have the Hauppauge card, then you're also sitting pretty. After hours of watching the same loop of CNN Headline news on these cards, the first and second place winners do offer a significant improvement in image quality over the remaining contenders - to the point where it is actually noticeable in day-to-day viewing.
The problem really isn't which card offers the best image quality, but rather how much money are you willing to spend for that last 5% of image quality - and here's where the decision gets tough. In most areas, SD cable is extremely poor quality to begin with. For many people, spending over $100 on a TV tuner just isn't justified to get an improvement on top of an already poor cable signal.
More than anything, ATI faces a major issue with the pricing and the release timeframe of the TV Wonder Elite. At this point, there's no excitement in yet another hardware MPEG-2 encoder, especially not one that weighs in at the top of the single tuner price class. Although ATI has done an excellent job with the Theater 550 and the TV Wonder Elite, it may just be too late to make a difference.
If you are less willing to spend money on a TV tuner (which is quite understandable), ATI's eHome Wonder and eMuzed's Maui-II PCI PVR are both excellent, lower priced alternatives. The ATI eHome Wonder is actually about half the price of the TV Wonder Elite, which means that you can actually end up with a dual tuner MCE box for the same price as a single tuner MCE box with the TV Wonder Elite.
By the end of this year, Windows XP Media Center Edition is supposed to have CableCard support, which will enable complete HDTV support for MCE boxes above and beyond the disappointing limitation for only over the air broadcasts that's in MCE 2005. Hopefully, this roundup will be a farewell to SD as we eagerly await the first HDTV tuners with CableCard support later this year.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
61 Comments
View All Comments
Denial - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
beyond - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
I'll admit I was very suprised to see the PVR150 Left off the comparo...Anyways, if anyone's interested htpcnews just posted a 550 review / comparo between it and the PVR150 a few minutes ago.
http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=powercolor_t55...
vailr - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
Re:Quote: "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".
How about the Plextor ConvertX PVR, External USB?
http://www.outpost.com/product/4279394?site=sr:SEA...
Would MCE recognize this as a compatable TV tuner?
Or, are only PCI slot tuner cards recognized?
ViRGE - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
I agree with the comments about the PVR150; it was a good review as far as methodology goes, but the lack of a PVR150 is a very big oversight that compromises the usefulness of the review. No one is going to be buying a 250 these days, they'll be after the 150.krose - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
The Hauppauge PVR250 is not equivalent to the PVR500, the PVR150 is. The 500 is the 150 with dual tuners. The PVR150MCE can be had as OEM for as little as $65. It should have been used in the review.krose - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
segagenesis - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
Having used Hauppauge TV cards since 1998 I would have to agree with some other comments here. The PVR-150 replaced the PVR-250 line, and its $99 retail using the newer conexant chip... so really reviewing the original PVR-250 (which is nearly 2 years old?) is obsolete. And yes, the PVR-500 is dual tuner going for about $150 retail. I would say the PVR-150 is a better deal even if its sans remote.One factor unmentioned is the PVR cards are fairly robust when it comes to support, they will work both in Windows (outside of MCE with other apps) AND Linux with MythTV using IVTV drivers. They dont come with remotes which is a nice gadget addon for the ATI card but you can always get one seperate for the Hauppauge one. Also if the color oversaturation is really that much of a problem on the PVR cant it just be turned down?
gbrux - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
My step by step to install the ATI HDTV Wonder in a new Windows XP Media Center Edtion 2005 box can be found in the Forums in the Operating Systems section.http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...
Fallen Kell - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
It is an intresting review and pretty good, but I had a few issues with it especially with the price given for the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250. I personally just bought the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500MCE for $145 two weeks ago, so I know for a fact that the quoted price of $140-160 for the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 is well off spec of what it is really going for. Is this difference enough to change the recommendation, well I would say yes, since you get a dual tuner solution in a single card for the same cost as the ATI TV Wonder Elite, and you said it in your review that there was very little in turns of differences that you could notice other then some of the colors being slightly off. That issue is fixed by simply changing the settings on the card/decoder/encoder.Again, it was a great review, just simply has the wrong price data for certain cards. And you are correct the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500MCE is simply two Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250's on the same card.
Traire - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
The Saphire Theatrix 550, which is identical to the ATi card only with a different remote, can be found for ~$75.