The New Theater 650 TV Tuner Solution from ATI
by Josh Venning on June 14, 2006 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
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Final Words
One thing many people commented on in our DualTV MCE article was the fact that we didn't include a Hauppauge tuner for comparison. We haven't included one in this review either, but we've looked at these cards in the past. To recap, the Hauppauge PVR-250 (and 350) is about the same as the Theater 550 in quality. What you get with a PVR-500 is also going to be similar to the DualTV MCE because of the dual tuner capability.
While software support might be a factor to consider when comparing the DualTV to the Theater 650, for the most part both of these cards work with a variety of TV applications, even though the DualTV is marketed more towards those with Windows MCE. The actual size of these cards might also be a factor for those with small cases, as the DualTV is double the height of the Theater 650 (and 550); however, the DualTV is still shorter than most GPUs.
Overall, the ATI Theater 650 does seem to provide better image quality than the NVIDIA DualTV MCE due to ATI's advancements in things like 3D comb filters, noise reduction, and edge enhancement. We would even say that the Theater 550 comes out ahead of the DualTV in some tests, and in terms of image quality they're about a tie (along with the Hauppauge PVR-250/350/500). The fact that the Theater 650 has support for DTV also gives it an edge over the others, and we also like the added control over things like sharpness and filters that ATI has provided with the new multimedia software.
The 650 will be available sometime in July according to ATI, and unfortunately we aren't sure what the final price will be. The NVIDIA DualTV MCE is still currently only available on the NVIDIA website for $169, while the Theater 550 has gone down in price slightly to around $70. Of course the price of the Theater 650 will be a big factor in the overall desirability of the card, so we will have to wait and see before we can completely assess its value. It would seem to us that a price of $90 to $100 would not be unreasonable for a card of this type with this feature set (i.e. DTV). Things like software bundle and remote control may change the package price somewhat, but this would be a fair price for the card itself in our opinion.
Taking everything into account, there are a lot of positives about the Theater 650. With all of the new features and enhancements, it looks to be the best TV tuner solution right now in terms of image quality. It's true that it doesn't have dual tuner capabilities like the DualTV MCE or Hauppauge PVR-500, but with two Theater 650s in your system not only would you achieve the dual TV ability, but you would also get higher image quality at the same time. This would of course require more space in your system and probably draw a bit more power, and you also need to make sure you have a motherboard with two available PCI slots (CrossFire/SLI users with dual slot GPUs need not apply), but for those serious about a home theater PC setup this should be possible.
The Theater 650 Pro may indeed be the best quality analog TV Tuner when it becomes available, but we have to bear in mind that this is still a growing technology, and cards like these still can't compete in all areas with a digital cable/satellite box hooked into your TV. Hopefully this will change when we see retail availability of CableCard products. With their introduction it's likely that tuner cards like the Theater 650 Pro and its successors may become even more important. If we are to believe all the convergence hype we've seen come and go, eventually we may replace all of our home entertainment needs with a PC. In the future, we expect to see real consumer electronic quality available on the desktop. Until such products become available, this card will be the card of choice for those users looking for the best TV tuner card for their computer/home theater setup, and we applaud ATI for the advancements they have made.
One thing many people commented on in our DualTV MCE article was the fact that we didn't include a Hauppauge tuner for comparison. We haven't included one in this review either, but we've looked at these cards in the past. To recap, the Hauppauge PVR-250 (and 350) is about the same as the Theater 550 in quality. What you get with a PVR-500 is also going to be similar to the DualTV MCE because of the dual tuner capability.
While software support might be a factor to consider when comparing the DualTV to the Theater 650, for the most part both of these cards work with a variety of TV applications, even though the DualTV is marketed more towards those with Windows MCE. The actual size of these cards might also be a factor for those with small cases, as the DualTV is double the height of the Theater 650 (and 550); however, the DualTV is still shorter than most GPUs.
Overall, the ATI Theater 650 does seem to provide better image quality than the NVIDIA DualTV MCE due to ATI's advancements in things like 3D comb filters, noise reduction, and edge enhancement. We would even say that the Theater 550 comes out ahead of the DualTV in some tests, and in terms of image quality they're about a tie (along with the Hauppauge PVR-250/350/500). The fact that the Theater 650 has support for DTV also gives it an edge over the others, and we also like the added control over things like sharpness and filters that ATI has provided with the new multimedia software.
The 650 will be available sometime in July according to ATI, and unfortunately we aren't sure what the final price will be. The NVIDIA DualTV MCE is still currently only available on the NVIDIA website for $169, while the Theater 550 has gone down in price slightly to around $70. Of course the price of the Theater 650 will be a big factor in the overall desirability of the card, so we will have to wait and see before we can completely assess its value. It would seem to us that a price of $90 to $100 would not be unreasonable for a card of this type with this feature set (i.e. DTV). Things like software bundle and remote control may change the package price somewhat, but this would be a fair price for the card itself in our opinion.
Taking everything into account, there are a lot of positives about the Theater 650. With all of the new features and enhancements, it looks to be the best TV tuner solution right now in terms of image quality. It's true that it doesn't have dual tuner capabilities like the DualTV MCE or Hauppauge PVR-500, but with two Theater 650s in your system not only would you achieve the dual TV ability, but you would also get higher image quality at the same time. This would of course require more space in your system and probably draw a bit more power, and you also need to make sure you have a motherboard with two available PCI slots (CrossFire/SLI users with dual slot GPUs need not apply), but for those serious about a home theater PC setup this should be possible.
The Theater 650 Pro may indeed be the best quality analog TV Tuner when it becomes available, but we have to bear in mind that this is still a growing technology, and cards like these still can't compete in all areas with a digital cable/satellite box hooked into your TV. Hopefully this will change when we see retail availability of CableCard products. With their introduction it's likely that tuner cards like the Theater 650 Pro and its successors may become even more important. If we are to believe all the convergence hype we've seen come and go, eventually we may replace all of our home entertainment needs with a PC. In the future, we expect to see real consumer electronic quality available on the desktop. Until such products become available, this card will be the card of choice for those users looking for the best TV tuner card for their computer/home theater setup, and we applaud ATI for the advancements they have made.
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pjladyfox - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
She actually. ^__^The one thing that really irked me over the 550, which pretty much forced us to go with the X1800 AIW instead, is that without MCE 2005 it was not a very useful card. Heck, we did'nt even have the fallback of the Multimedia Center, which a lot of us who have had either ATI AIW or their stand-alone TV tuner learned to live with, and instead got shafted with the terrible bundled software. :P I mean, come on, if you bundled the nice Adobe software with the AIW why not at least do it with your tuner cards instead of pawning off the third-rate discount bin stuff?
In either event I'm hoping that whoever did this article re-labels this one since this is definatly NOT a review in any sense of the term.
LoneWolf15 - Thursday, June 15, 2006 - link
Ouch! I'm so sorry. No disrespect intended. :)
That's why at the time I went with a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150. My TV Wonder PCI is fine for just watching (provided you use very specific versions of ATI's MMC software, as some have seriously broken the audio setup in their push to go from analog to digital across the PCI bus) but all the software solutions I saw were most compatible with Hauppauge boards at the time over the Theater 550. In fact, GB-PVR, my personal favorite, is great when paired with any PVR-xxx card. Bonus: it's free.
I got a ReplayTV on the cheap with a lifetime subscription, so I dismantled my HTPC. Still, I'd love to replace my TV Wonder with a good card for casual use in my main system. With the lack of information on DVR and Catalyst Multimedia Center, this card won't be it. And I'm in full agreement of you that this article does NOT constitute a review.
SHSPVR - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
In ABC it all get this error6/14/2006 11:35:54 AM - Problem connecting to tracker - (10049, "Can't assign requested address")
hondaman - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
I fail to understand why you think its acceptable to leave out the DEFACTO capture card. AGAIN. Hauppauge is the clear industry giant in video capture, and you publish another article, flippantly referencing us to your previous review of the card. Image quality is subjective, and its important to allow us to see, and judge, the image quality instead of your "just trust me" attitude.Leaving hauppauge out of a capture card review would be like reviewing ATI's latest video card, and comparing it to SIS instead of nvidia.
Myrandex - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
One disappointing *feature* I discovered on my Theater 550 PCIE that is EXTREMELY IRRITATING is lag with the video in ports. I tried hooking up a game system to it, and if I hit the jump button for example, I would have to wait a little bit for my character to jump. I'm not talking anythign like either, I'm talking extremely noticeable. Itried contacting powercolor help, and they said update drivers (already did) and somethign else, and then quit responding to me. Is there anyway that this can be tested as if I would have known this ahead of time, I don't think I would have purchased it.nvmarino - Wednesday, June 21, 2006 - link
If you want to connect a game console to your display via your PC you want one of these:http://www.simplifidigital.com/shopsimplifi/index....">http://www.simplifidigital.com/shopsimp.../index.p...
As others have commented, tuners cards (especially those with hardware encoders) are not designed for this.
mattsimis - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
I agree, I had to get rid of my Theater 550 setup (and seems 650 is as bad) and swap back to a 7year old Brooktree 878 based TV Capture card due to the lag. The BT878 has a delay of about less than 100msec, its excellent.I have to use the Svideo Input on TV Cap Cards as the Satelite TV service here (Sky "Digital") uses encrypted signals that can only be decoder on their decoder box. Once you decode it, you can output the raw video signal (SCART RGB to Svideo adapter). I then input this into DScaler. Image quality was a bit better on the Theater 550, however the lag was unusable.
From the article it seems the lag isnt just on the Video Inputs, but the TV Tuning too, so contary to the other reply, seems everyone will notice it. Cant understand how a 2000msec delay is considered "ok" for product release.
Matt
BigLan - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
"Cant understand how a 2000msec delay is considered "ok" for product release."These types of TV cards are designed for watching TV (not video games) and specifically for timeshifting/recording TV using a PVR application with a built in TV Guide, so channel surfing isn't necessary. For that purpose a 2 second delay doesn't really matter.
What you want is a transcoder, which is a different beast altogether.
sirfergy - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
That is because it has to encode the signal. You aren't supposed to use it as a video input to your computer for consoles.Crucial - Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - link
Your choice to not include the Hauppage cards was a slap in the face of everyone who asked for them and nothing short of a joke. The Hauppage cards are by far the more popular product and it would make more sense to compare them for those of us who might buy the new card if they infact are better. If your video card reviews followed the same pattern as your tv tuner reviews you would be the laughing stock of the internet. We want a screenshot of the apple, pattern and girl on a hauppage card to see for ourselves which card looks better. I'm guessing the couple of years old pvr150 would look better than all of them and ATI wouldn't let you show it. If not then do a couple more tests and update the review.As for the DTV portion of these cards, I'm sorry that you don't get DTV reception in your area but I couldn't care less. Millions of us do and use it. If Anandtech is going to be a top quality review site they need to find a reviewer who can get it. Important things to know about the DTV would be can a digital and analog channel be recorded at the same time? What kind of cpu usage does the tuner use when recording both or watching an analog and watching a digital? Can MCE use 2 of these cards and record 2 analog and 2 digital channels at once?
Each time I see these reviews I hope you change you tune and do a real comparison of whats out there and being used instead of being the puppet for the corporation thats giving you free product to play with.