HTPC - TV Tuner Reviews
by Jarred Walton on December 7, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
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Conclusion
Have we found a new champion TV Tuner card? That depends on what you're looking for. All three of the cards have something to offer, and unfortunately, no single card is going to please every potential user. Here's how we see the breakdown of cards.
For the best analog picture experience, the ATI Theater 550 cards continue to get our recommendation. The included software with the PowerColor card was disappointing with its lack of an EPG - though European customers won't have a problem - but the quality was still great and the card is Windows MCE compatible. If analog support is still moderately important, yet you also want HDTV support, the Fusion5 card does okay. If you pair it with Windows MCE for analog channels and only use FusionHDTV for the HD channels, the end result is generally good. The MyHD card really has difficulties with analog channels, unfortunately, but it comes out on top in DTV reception, and if you throw enough processing power at the problem, the analog capabilities match and even surpass the Fusion5.
OTA DTV support can be found in quite a few other products that cost less than either the Fusion5 or MyHD. If that's all you're after, you would probably be better off getting a good DTV tuner and a good analog tuner for now. If you can't get a good terrestrial signal, though, the Fusion5 and MyHD become interesting. For QAM support, the MyHD wins out, but since both cards are just capturing a transport stream, there isn't a difference in quality. MyHD's lack of MCE support is a minor drawback as the UI could use some improvements, but it's something that you can learn to live with. If you plan on using the MyHD with an HDTV, we would also recommend the DVI daughtercard or a VGA to component transcoder.
The real problem with the QAM cards is that you're spending quite a bit of money for hardware that might be obsolete in a year (when CableCard will apparently finally debut alongside Windows Vista). If you already have digital cable with HD support, it's probably a $10 per month or less increase to get a DVR box upgrade. $10 per month means that you can get two years of DVR use with all of your channels for the price of the MyHD+DVI, or just over a year for the price of the Fusion5 Gold. Of course, you have far less hard drive capacity (40 or 80 GB is typical in set-top cable boxes), and you can't burn the files to a DVDR, share them with friends, or watch them from another computer. If that's what you're after, and if you've already spent the money on a nice HDTV, $250 for the MyHD plus DVI card is going to get you some fun toys to play with. Also, if you just have standard cable, it's closer to $15 or $20 a month to upgrade to HDTV plus DVR.
If you can live without DTV support (or if you don't have an HDTV), and you want a PCI Express TV Tuner, you'll be very pleased with the PowerColor card. If you don't care about the PCI Express interface - and it really doesn't add anything in terms of quality or performance - then getting any of the other Theater 550 PCI cards will also work. It's nice to see that the price premium for the PCIe version of the card really isn't that big; you can find the PowerColor PCIe T55E-PO3 from Newegg for $94 shipped, while the PowerColor T55-PO3 costs about $85 shipped. There are probably some Shuttle SN25P owners who will be glad to find a use for their PCIe X1 slot.
Overall, none of the cards reviewed today are perfect. There are three options covered here: great analog with no digital; great digital with no analog recording unless you have a dual-core system; or decent analog and great digital with a slightly less friendly user interface. What we really want now is to have ATI, PowerColor, or someone else equal the analog quality of the Theater 550 and add in DTV support - and personally the QAM support is required, as OTA just doesn't work for my needs. Even though dealing with the numerous sub-channels on digital cable can be irritating, it's better than not to have the ability to receive those channels at all.
While we're making requests, we'd like to see something combining the best of both the Fusion and MyHD cards (and software) into a single option. It shouldn't be that difficult to modify the MyHD to get analog encoding performance closer to the level of the Fusion5. Maybe we'll see this in something like a MyHD MDP-140. Fully integrated and working EPGs for all three cards should also be way up on the "to-do" lists for these companies. The last item for our wish list isn't targeted at the manufacturers; rather, we would like to plead for all the broadcast companies to shift to full HDTV. Hopefully, with the release of the Xbox 360 and the upcoming PlayStation 3, HDTV adoption will finally reach the point where broadcast companies create HDTV content and downsample it to analog resolutions, rather than recording analog or SDTV and scaling the content to HDTV resolutions. (Yeah, I know - I'm dreaming.)
With all that said, if I had to go out and buy a TV tuner card right now, the MyHD MDP-130 would be my choice. It's expensive and the analog has steep hardware demands, but I can handle both of those requirements. I can even deal with the less-than-perfect user interface - if you've ever installed Linux and managed to get it hooked up to the Internet and playing video, you can certainly handle the MyHD software. This is not a wholesale recommendation, but the MyHD fills an important niche for people like me. If you want both digital and analog support and you lack a dual core system for running the MyHD, adding in something like the PowerColor for your analog channels is also a reasonable choice.
Have we found a new champion TV Tuner card? That depends on what you're looking for. All three of the cards have something to offer, and unfortunately, no single card is going to please every potential user. Here's how we see the breakdown of cards.
For the best analog picture experience, the ATI Theater 550 cards continue to get our recommendation. The included software with the PowerColor card was disappointing with its lack of an EPG - though European customers won't have a problem - but the quality was still great and the card is Windows MCE compatible. If analog support is still moderately important, yet you also want HDTV support, the Fusion5 card does okay. If you pair it with Windows MCE for analog channels and only use FusionHDTV for the HD channels, the end result is generally good. The MyHD card really has difficulties with analog channels, unfortunately, but it comes out on top in DTV reception, and if you throw enough processing power at the problem, the analog capabilities match and even surpass the Fusion5.
OTA DTV support can be found in quite a few other products that cost less than either the Fusion5 or MyHD. If that's all you're after, you would probably be better off getting a good DTV tuner and a good analog tuner for now. If you can't get a good terrestrial signal, though, the Fusion5 and MyHD become interesting. For QAM support, the MyHD wins out, but since both cards are just capturing a transport stream, there isn't a difference in quality. MyHD's lack of MCE support is a minor drawback as the UI could use some improvements, but it's something that you can learn to live with. If you plan on using the MyHD with an HDTV, we would also recommend the DVI daughtercard or a VGA to component transcoder.
The real problem with the QAM cards is that you're spending quite a bit of money for hardware that might be obsolete in a year (when CableCard will apparently finally debut alongside Windows Vista). If you already have digital cable with HD support, it's probably a $10 per month or less increase to get a DVR box upgrade. $10 per month means that you can get two years of DVR use with all of your channels for the price of the MyHD+DVI, or just over a year for the price of the Fusion5 Gold. Of course, you have far less hard drive capacity (40 or 80 GB is typical in set-top cable boxes), and you can't burn the files to a DVDR, share them with friends, or watch them from another computer. If that's what you're after, and if you've already spent the money on a nice HDTV, $250 for the MyHD plus DVI card is going to get you some fun toys to play with. Also, if you just have standard cable, it's closer to $15 or $20 a month to upgrade to HDTV plus DVR.
If you can live without DTV support (or if you don't have an HDTV), and you want a PCI Express TV Tuner, you'll be very pleased with the PowerColor card. If you don't care about the PCI Express interface - and it really doesn't add anything in terms of quality or performance - then getting any of the other Theater 550 PCI cards will also work. It's nice to see that the price premium for the PCIe version of the card really isn't that big; you can find the PowerColor PCIe T55E-PO3 from Newegg for $94 shipped, while the PowerColor T55-PO3 costs about $85 shipped. There are probably some Shuttle SN25P owners who will be glad to find a use for their PCIe X1 slot.
Overall, none of the cards reviewed today are perfect. There are three options covered here: great analog with no digital; great digital with no analog recording unless you have a dual-core system; or decent analog and great digital with a slightly less friendly user interface. What we really want now is to have ATI, PowerColor, or someone else equal the analog quality of the Theater 550 and add in DTV support - and personally the QAM support is required, as OTA just doesn't work for my needs. Even though dealing with the numerous sub-channels on digital cable can be irritating, it's better than not to have the ability to receive those channels at all.
While we're making requests, we'd like to see something combining the best of both the Fusion and MyHD cards (and software) into a single option. It shouldn't be that difficult to modify the MyHD to get analog encoding performance closer to the level of the Fusion5. Maybe we'll see this in something like a MyHD MDP-140. Fully integrated and working EPGs for all three cards should also be way up on the "to-do" lists for these companies. The last item for our wish list isn't targeted at the manufacturers; rather, we would like to plead for all the broadcast companies to shift to full HDTV. Hopefully, with the release of the Xbox 360 and the upcoming PlayStation 3, HDTV adoption will finally reach the point where broadcast companies create HDTV content and downsample it to analog resolutions, rather than recording analog or SDTV and scaling the content to HDTV resolutions. (Yeah, I know - I'm dreaming.)
With all that said, if I had to go out and buy a TV tuner card right now, the MyHD MDP-130 would be my choice. It's expensive and the analog has steep hardware demands, but I can handle both of those requirements. I can even deal with the less-than-perfect user interface - if you've ever installed Linux and managed to get it hooked up to the Internet and playing video, you can certainly handle the MyHD software. This is not a wholesale recommendation, but the MyHD fills an important niche for people like me. If you want both digital and analog support and you lack a dual core system for running the MyHD, adding in something like the PowerColor for your analog channels is also a reasonable choice.
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8steve8 - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
bottom line:if i want to watch/record hdtv channels like HBO and/or discover via a PC...
im out of luck?
those channels are not ota... are provided through a cable provider....
i can do this once cable card finally comes around?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
HBO and most other movie channels are encrypted. Funny enough, some of the on demand channels seem to be picked up. For instance channels 101-1, 101-2, 102-1, 102-2, and several subchannels on the physical channels 93 and 94 all showed what amounts to random content. Movies, cartoons, and yes, even porn. If you tuned in to one of the channels, sometimes you would see it going to fast-forward mode, like the person watching the content was skipping ahead.Cable card is supposed to allow you to view encrypted content on TVs as well as computers without a set-top box. Until I see it in actual use, though, I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work. I would assume it will just store an encrypted TP file, and the cable card will contain the decryption logic.
nullpointerus - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cablecard">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CablecardI've been waiting for decent HTPC CableCard products for ~2 years now. They'll probably come out very late in 2006, achieve their intended interoperability sometime between the second and third generation of products, and become practically flawless around the same time that they become obsolete. That's just a guess, mind you...
Tujan - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
It was intriging because nobody has really compared the use of DIY HTPCs. With what limited parts are available.I wouldn't use a non-multicore processor for something dealing with HDPCs. Just the shear amount of graphics and screen space,the relative newcomer to its display of screen space,. The notorious 'switching between apps,and those running in the background,- much less using the PCI bus to do so.
What I did miss out of this story,was a shot of a connected MYHD130 to its screen display. Kind of lost me there. With the connect ups to utilizing a screen,and the computers video card. See Im reading imagining toggling between user interface,remote,and what this means to the rigging of separate devices outside the computer itself.Caveat Emptor for/from them along side. And you mentioned that ATI was 'out-of-the-picture , for HDTV unless the components where hooked up. So to share that ATI graphics cards are not useful for the MYHD130.
Would certainly make a wish list to the MYHD130 to put it onto the PCI-e lane.Get it off the PCI bus.
As for those encrypted channels.Are you sure they would stay that way ? Think you could pick out your PPV (Pay-Per-view) channel from that list ? [ ]
You mentioned your Monitor,that they have in common Overscan.I simply have the question included to involve just how a HTPC will correctly recognize a monitor (consider a 32 to 40" LCD TV) ,when most this involves the PNP feature Ive known for doing so.? [ ]
ATI cards aren't any good with the DTV if using the DVI for/from them for the HD screens ? Think 32" to 42" LCD TVs here.[ ]
- glad your doing the experimenting here.Good article.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
LCD TVs shouldn't have a problem with overscan. Any rear projection displays will have overscan, and I believe all DLP have overscan as well. There are some good DLP displays that only have 1% overscan, though -- too bad they're really expensive.If you want a picture of what the MyHD looks like when connected, let me see about uploading one and I'll provide a link. This is with the DVI daughter card:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/multimedia/tvt...">DVI Passthru Image
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/multimedia/tvt...">VGA Passthru Image
Hopefully that's clear - there's a lot of cable clutter, so I labeled the pertinent connections.
Tujan - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Thanks for reply. Even though I know a lot,Im still a novice. Know a lot of the acronymns,but dealing with things marketed off the top just keeps me on to them for a limited span.The picture there,the top card is the video card,with the lower cards being the TV tuners then.Im thinkin that somehow your giving up a controlled connection to your display from the computer by using the MyHD130 ? Or it limits the 'out of your video card when you only would have a single hook up on the Display.[ ]
- I will go to there site to look for more.
Encryption ? [ ] Mean if you subscribe to HBO via your home cable line,HBO will not be able to be seen if utilizing the HTPC with the QAM/HD TV cards ?
Certainly the situation would be averted for the configuration of the cable to Display(cable box to default display) - since (T,F) the Display has an encryption chip within it to do so,(1),or (2) Encryption is handled via the cable box. With everything else dealing with something of the HDCP,HDMI type scenarios.... The encryption mechanism has got to work somewhere in the final render at the Display. Certainly the Cable Company isn't selling me the Display.....
Of course this is a whole nother anchalotta.
I pretty much just look for the configuration compatibility in the input,output for the hookups.And if the software will work/..how difficult to navigate them.
Thinking everythings hunky dory after a large investment ...Again thanks for reply.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Decryption of the encrypted channels is handled by the cable box. The cable card standard will allow other devices to do that decryption -- basically, the key/algorithm will be stored on the cable card. Of course, that means you need to have a TV and or computer that has a cable card slot. Hopefully they'll make a USB adapter.mariush - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
I'm a bit dissapointed that you have used Divx to test the analog recording. XViD would have probably been much faster, at least that's how it is on my computer.Also, I would probably either use XViD set to record with quantizer 1 (max quality) which takes about 6-10 MB/s at 768x576 25fps or I would use a lossless encoder such as HuffYUV (~12 MB/s at 768x576 25fps)
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
The DivX codec is officially supported by the MyHD software. Xvid was far slower, and that holds in general, unless there is a special setting to get it to encode faster. All the real-time encoding has to be done through a VFW codec, and I couldn't find a fast codec to handle that. The DivX codec is also the only codec that allows you to resize the video content, at least as far as I could tell. Otherwise you end up with an incorrect aspect ratio, as seen on the top left picture on page 15.If you download the videos, you might feel that the DivX codec results in a loss of quality, even on the X2 system. That video sample is actually very close to what you see when watching live analog content with the MyHD card. At best, it's decent analog video. Just about any analog-only TV tuner will produce equal or better output.
Back to the codecs, if you really want to get a decent compression, while not losing a lot of quality, I would recommend using a second PC or re-encoding the videos while your computer is sitting idle. You could do the same thing with the TP files, re-encoding them using the Xvid codec with a data rate of around 1 GB per hour and the target, resolution of 720 x 480 -- or perhaps go for 2/3 GB per hour and target a 1280x1024 resolution.
One of the benefits of the DivX codec is that quite a few consumer-electronics devices now support it as well. I'm not aware of any DVD players that can handle Xvid.
xtknight - Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - link
Sorry for the double post, but by the way, the program AVI.NET can encode xvid and divx for standalone players. That's the whole purpose of it: to use only the features standalone players support. I recommend you try it out.