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 Platform
Not everyone is looking to build their own MCE box, and luckily, prices have come down tremendously on pre-built MCE machines. For this review, we had a chance to play around with WinBook's PowerSpec MCE 410 - a $999 MCE 2005 system (after $200 mail-in rebate).
The system is configured with a Pentium 4 530 (3.0GHz), 512MB of DDR400, ATI X300SE, a 160GB hard drive and a 16X dual layer burner, all on a FIC 915G motherboard.
The case of the MCE 410 is a little too shiny for our tastes, but still very subtle and it looks quite at home in your home theater. We would've preferred something with a matte finish or maybe even something with a silver/aluminum finish, but the MCE 410 is one of the nicer looking systems out there.
A jog dial controls the volume
Front mounted card reader...
...and front mounted USB/Firewire/audio ports
Because of the low profile, the MCE 410 can't really function as a gaming box - you can only install low profile graphics cards, which limits you to the X300 class of GPUs at this point. Thanks to a riser card, you can install two normal height PCI cards, but they can't be longer than about 6.5"; otherwise, they will interfere with the DVD drive.
Low profile X300
The performance of the Pentium 4 530 is more than acceptable for an MCE machine. The program guide is quite fast and responsive and we didn't have any hiccups during our use of the system.
Quite possibly one of the biggest attractions to the system is the fact that it relies on a single fan, the power supply fan, to cool the entire system (including the CPU). Because of this, the Samsung SpinPoint HDD is the loudest component in the system - which, for the most part, means it's pretty quiet and you get absolutely no fan noise.
Also priced at $999, WinBook offers a 30" LCD TV with a 1280 x 768 native resolution. WinBook sent us the display to try out with the system, and while we thought that the panel itself was decent, our biggest problem with it was its native resolution. At 1280 x 768, there's inherently a small amount of scaling for 720p content, which isn't desirable for the role of a LCD TV.
Now, you have an idea of our test platform. Although, a custom built MCE box would do just fine as well, so let's get to the contenders...
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overclockingoodness - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
#7 (kjohnson): Did you not read the article? He said CNN and Weather channels are the only two channels that repeatedly show same programming in a given time frame. For CNN it's every 30 minutes.What's up with the "I hope that is not an indication of your ideology." statement. So, Anand can't even watch CNN and post screenshots because some readers don't like it. Why don't you just concentrate on other, more important parts of the review than worrying about stupid things like what he watches and what not?
I have never found Anand's ideology to be wrong, so even if he does watch CNN - I don't think it matters. Stupid people, stupid comments...
scott967 - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
If you do this in the future, I would like to see a test of OTA ATSC reception for tuners. It seems to be a common problem with getting consistently good reception of the UHF band signal most broadcasters are assigned.Also, I found use of the terms "SD" and "HD" confusing. I have both NTSC and ATSC (8VSB) tuners, and the ATSC tuner receives either / both the SD format and HD format depending on the broadcaster. (The local FOX affiliate provides both feeds on different subchannels). ISTM that reception of the SD resolution is a little easier (fwerer dropouts) than the HD. I guess if you are talking cable, the SD/HD thing is not so confusing. At least on OTA, HD format can contain either SD material with pillars or HD, depending on what the network is providing.
gbrux - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
Fine piece, Anand.However, the real excitement is high definition TV in the Windows XP Media Center Edtion 2005.
Last weekend, I watched on the Masters tournament in high definition from my local CBS station from my WMCE box. I have the ATI HDTV Wonder installed, and it has performed flawlessly sinced I installed it about four months ago.
I say, buy one of the cheaper standard TV tuners that you have reviewed, and buy the ATI HDTV Wonder (at about $150 some places) to build that WMCE box.
Incidentally, I'm going to put up a thread in the Forums with a step by step procedure for installing the ATI HDTV Wonder in a new WMCE box.
It'll be there in about an hour.
creathir - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
kjohnsonFoxNews all the way!
kjohnson - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
Great review. But why watch CNN? I hope that is not an indication of your ideology.CigarSmokedByClinton - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
Good review, but IMO this review without the 150MCE makes it almost worthless....The 150MCE is at least equivalent to the 250 but comes in at $65, the low end of the price range.
DigitalWarrior - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
Interesting article, but it doesn't consider the Hauppauge PVR-150MCE card which only costs about $65 from pcalchemy.com (http://www.pcalchemy.com/product_info.php/cPath/21...According to this article (http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=pvr_150_1) , Hauppauge was able to reduce the cost of the PVR-150MCE by using a new A/D chip that could handle both the audio and video conversion functions with better image quality than the PVR-250.
I just built a HTPC using three of these PVR-150MCE tuner cards, and I couldn't be more pleased with them!
DigitalWarrior - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
ranger203 - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
BTW, Great article Anand... Hard to find anyone that spends teh time to rate tv tuners. My MCE 2005 Box works great...ranger203 - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
What, no PVR-150, or PVR-150MCE??? I can't tell the difference between the 150 & 250 models. And, everyone always likes price: $75 for teh MCE version...