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
The Test
Testing TV tuners, especially comparing based on image quality, is a tough thing to do; the main problem is that there's no good test scene that's repeatable across multiple systems. Testing video capture functionality is easy. Simply play a non-encrypted DVD over and over again and compare image quality - but you can't really tell a TV channel to put its contents on repeat so that we can see how the same scenes look across 6 different TV tuners.
Using something like cable on-demand doesn't really work either because then, you're left using an external tuner to actually get the signal, and simply test, the TV tuner's ability to capture an external signal, not receive and tune a cable channel.
Luckily, there are two TV channels that are perfectly designed for the task at hand: CNN Headline News and The Weather Channel. Both of the aforementioned channels repeat their content, usually every half hour, for several hours at a time. Armed with 6 TV Tuners and a Sunday of nothing to do but watch the same 30 minutes of headlines over and over again, we had our test platform. Even after doing this, it's still tough to get frame for frame, identical comparisons across the TV tuners. So often times, we'll resort to using different scenes to illustrate strengths and weaknesses of the TV tuners. Rest assured that our findings came to be after spending quite a bit of time with each one of these tuners.
CPU utilization wasn't a concern, as all of the tuners ate up less than 7% of our CPU while recording. Given that you can't really run Windows XP Media Center Edition without a fairly fast processor and that all of the cards compared here today are full hardware MPEG-2 encoders, there's not much to talk about with CPU utilization.
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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.