HTPC - TV Tuner Reviews
by Jarred Walton on December 7, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
System Configuration
Initially, we weren't expecting hardware demands to be too great, so we had no intention of pairing the cards with higher-end components. We started the tests with a Sempron 64 3100+ system that was available, figuring that it would provide more than enough power. The PowerColor card was a later addition and made things a bit more difficult as we had already begun running tests. The problem is that the initial test system used a DFI LanParty UT 250Gb. Being an older motherboard – even though it remains one of the best socket 754 boards on the market – it lacks PCIe slots.
In order to accommodate the PowerColor card, we had to get a system with a PCIe slot. An HP DX5150 that we're also working on reviewing was available, so we used that. This is a socket 939 business PC and comes equipped with an ATI Xpress 200 chipset, 2x512MB PC3200 CL3 RAM, and an Athlon 64 4000+ (ClawHammer core). While it packs more CPU power, the important thing is that it has a PCIe X1 slot where we could plug in the Theatre 550. Other components were also different, but we're using this as an opportunity to look at several HTPC platforms as opposed to simply placing the three cards in a single system.
To be fair, we retested the MyHD and Fusion5 cards in the HP system as well. We found that the added processing power had little effect on performance in most situations, the exception being the MyHD card with analog channels. That brought a third test system into use, with an X2 3800+ processor. We'll have more to say on that later, but it was only used to verify that analog encoding with the MyHD was CPU limited on the other platforms. It's always good to get an idea of how cards like these perform in multiple systems, and we were happy to find that the installation of the hardware didn't present any difficulties.
In general, the CPU isn't the bottleneck in HTPC systems. The remainder of the platform is often more important, and we wanted to look at several different platforms: ATI vs. NVIDIA chipsets and graphics cards. We thought that we'd begin by looking at that aspect of the HTPC market before moving onto the cards themselves.
Initially, we weren't expecting hardware demands to be too great, so we had no intention of pairing the cards with higher-end components. We started the tests with a Sempron 64 3100+ system that was available, figuring that it would provide more than enough power. The PowerColor card was a later addition and made things a bit more difficult as we had already begun running tests. The problem is that the initial test system used a DFI LanParty UT 250Gb. Being an older motherboard – even though it remains one of the best socket 754 boards on the market – it lacks PCIe slots.
In order to accommodate the PowerColor card, we had to get a system with a PCIe slot. An HP DX5150 that we're also working on reviewing was available, so we used that. This is a socket 939 business PC and comes equipped with an ATI Xpress 200 chipset, 2x512MB PC3200 CL3 RAM, and an Athlon 64 4000+ (ClawHammer core). While it packs more CPU power, the important thing is that it has a PCIe X1 slot where we could plug in the Theatre 550. Other components were also different, but we're using this as an opportunity to look at several HTPC platforms as opposed to simply placing the three cards in a single system.
| Sempron Configuration | |
| Motherboard: | DFI LanParty UT 250Gb |
| Processor: | AMD Sempron 64 3100+ (Palermo) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 (2-2-2-10-1T) |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 250GB 7200.8 SATA |
| Chipset Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce3 5.11 |
| Video Cards: | Sapphire X800 Pro AGP VIVO Leadtek 6800GT AGP |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 5.11 (CP and CCC versions) NVIDIA ForceWare 81.95 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Athlon 64 (HP DX5150) Configuration | |
| Motherboard: | HP DX5150 (ATI Xpress 200 chipset) |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (ClawHammer) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB Samsung PC3200 (3-3-3-8-1T) |
| Hard Drive: | Samsung 160GB SP1614C SATA |
| Chipset Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 5.11 IGP |
| Video Cards: | PowerColor X800 Pro PCIe VIVO XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB (450/1250 clocks) |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 5.11 (CP and CCC versions) NVIDIA ForceWare 81.95 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Configuration | |
| Motherboard: | DFI nF4 Infinity |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Manchester) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ PC4800 EL Platinum (2-2-2-7-1T) |
| Hard Drive: | Western Digital 250GB WD2500JS SATA-2 |
| Chipset Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce4 AMD 6.70 |
| Video Cards: | PowerColor X800 Pro PCIe VIVO XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB (450/1250 clocks) |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 5.11 (CP and CCC versions) NVIDIA ForceWare 81.95 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
To be fair, we retested the MyHD and Fusion5 cards in the HP system as well. We found that the added processing power had little effect on performance in most situations, the exception being the MyHD card with analog channels. That brought a third test system into use, with an X2 3800+ processor. We'll have more to say on that later, but it was only used to verify that analog encoding with the MyHD was CPU limited on the other platforms. It's always good to get an idea of how cards like these perform in multiple systems, and we were happy to find that the installation of the hardware didn't present any difficulties.
In general, the CPU isn't the bottleneck in HTPC systems. The remainder of the platform is often more important, and we wanted to look at several different platforms: ATI vs. NVIDIA chipsets and graphics cards. We thought that we'd begin by looking at that aspect of the HTPC market before moving onto the cards themselves.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
77 Comments
View All Comments
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link
Just to clarify, I'm speaking of overlay mode in general. The MyHD card overlay mode is limited to 720 x 484 reason. It does hardware decoding, which means it's generating the uncompressed HDTV stream on the card. A 720P compressed signal is up to 15 Mb per second. That presents no problem for the PCI bus. Uncompressed 720P, on the other hand, requires more bandwidth than the PCI bus can handle.1280 x 720 = 921600 pixels per frame
4 bytes per pixel = 3686400 bytes per frame.
60 frames per second = 221184000 bytes per second.
The PCI bus is a 32-bit bus, running at 33 MHz, giving a maximum bandwidth of 133 MB per second. Uncompressed 720P would require about 211 MB per second. This is one of many reasons that the AGP slot was created. The CPU can render into an AGP cards memory at up to 2133 MB per second, at least in theory.
So there is a reason that the my HD card doesn't render the overlay mode in anything more than 720 x 480. That doesn't mean I have to like that limitation. :-)
Crucial - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
I don't understand what the point of this review was. Why would you test a hardware based analog card with 2 cards that have software based analog? The addition of the theatre 550 card was completely unecessary and frankly makes no sense at all.A more effective test would have put the 2 HD cards up against the ATI HDTV wonder and another seperate test putting the 550 against the Hauppage pvr150 and an Avermedia card.
The Boston Dangler - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Good oneJarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
The review was because I had the cards. We've had complaints about putting out single item reviews. We've already looked at the HDTV Wonder, and it doesn't work for me - no QAM support and I don't want to get an expensive OTA antenna for a rental home. The whole article is a "state of the TV Tuner market" as well as individual card reviews, or at least that's how I intended it. Besides, the Theater 550 PCIe is really just a PCIe version of the PCI card we've already looked at, which is good to know.Previous analog tuners have been reviewed, and the ATI HDTV Wonder has also been reviewed. If you can get good OTA DTV reception, you probably have no need for something like the Fusion5 or MyHD. For people like me, though, the choices boil down to forgetting about DTV, getting a DVR upgrade to my cable box, and/or getting one of those two cards.
After playing with all the cards, I would say your best bet for quality is to get two cards, one of analog and a second for DTV.
Ceramicsteve - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Hey can you include a Mac based HDTV tuner in your round up? The only one I know of is EyETV from Elgato systems and it comes in a form of a breakout box.scott967 - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
I take it none of these tuners support HDCP on the digital out?scott s.
.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
That's correct, though I may have screwed up when I talked about my TV. I don't know if it has an HDMI or an HDCP port. I thought it was HDMI, but I could be mistaken.Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
> Using the Sempron 64 running at 2.50 GHz was more than sufficient for everything but the MyHD analog recording.There are no Semprons that run at 2.5 ghz.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
I had it overclocked -- I was trying to see if I could get it to work OK for the MyHD card.Olaf van der Spek - Thursday, December 8, 2005 - link
It may be a good idea to mentioned you were overclocking.