Introduction
It seems that now more than ever people are using their computers for a much wider variety of applications than in the past. For example, home theater systems are being centered more around computers now because of the versatility these systems offer. The level of quality being offered with computer home theaters is approaching - and in some cases surpassing - that of stand-alone components, and having one at the center of a home theater setup is looking more and more attractive for many users.While your parents or grandparents may be more comfortable dealing with more traditional separate audio and video components, most people who are able to navigate around their computers well enough wouldn't have much trouble getting a home theater setup on it. There is a wide variety of hardware and software out there to make this easier for us, and at the core of a PC setup like this would have to be the video card, sound card, and a TV tuner card. This article will focus on the last of those components.
There are many TV tuner cards available right now, and we'll be focusing on one in particular from NVIDIA for this review. We have previously reviewed the Hauppauge PVR-250 and ATI Theater 550, and we concluded that those two cards are the best quality analog tuners at present. (We also provided a look at the Theater 550 compared with a couple HDTV options, and that article provides some insight on how many of us currently view the HTPC market.) In the past, ATI has been the one to provide these kinds of parts among the graphics chip makers, and they are still ahead of NVIDIA in this area. However, with the release of the DualTV MCE tuner card, NVIDIA takes a step forward in this department. Hauppauge has also been a staple in this market, but as we feel they basically offer equivalent quality to the ATI Theater 550, we will only be including the ATI card in this article.
TV and movie recording services like TiVo and other DVRs are popular right now, but many people find their subscription fees and recording limitations undesirable. Luckily, there is an alternative and more people are beginning to see the benefits of a personal computer TV tuner/recorder for recording and watching their favorite shows.
We'll be looking closely at the NVIDIA DualTV MCE and it's features, as well as comparing it to a couple of other TV tuner solutions available in competition with this card. ATI's Theater 550 Pro has been around for a while and is similar to the DualTV MCE as a stand-alone TV tuner card. Also, while not quite as similar, ATI's All-In-Wonder line of cards offer TV tuning and graphics acceleration in one package and we'll look at the pros and cons of a solution like this as opposed to the DualTV MCE. So first let's take a look at the hardware.
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hondaman - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
FIRST thing I thought. Pretty bad review by AT standards.How does live tv look compared to REAL live tv, i.e. tv plugged right into your sat/cable reciever?
Where is the defacto standard for tv capture cards, the hauppauge? Why is this card not compared?
Will it run in linux based pvrs, and what are the tradeoffs? Is there any windows-only software that makes this card better, and isnt available for linux users, thus making it a bad choice for us?
Need WAY WAY WAY more info! Come on AT! You can do better than this!
stmok - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link
Knowing how Nvidia acts in regards to open-source in general, I seriously doubt this solution works in Linux. You're better off getting a Hauppauge card that is well known for Linux support.As for the article itself? (I'd have to agree with the others).
(1) Where the heck is CPU usage graphs?
(2) It would be wiser if you capture from the same show with the different cards, so we can compare quality.
(3) How does it compare to those Haupauge products?
(4) Support for other OSs? (We ain't all Windows users!)
(5) I am curious of the power consumption of capture cards...How much power do they burn?
micsaund - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
Also: "...all three of these cards use silicone tuners..."It's "silicon" -- silicone is used in completely different applications, some of which I'm sure I don't have to elaborate on ;)
guste - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
I'm a bit disappointed as well, but not surprised. Anandtech has it's strong areas and weak areas and this is definitely one of the weaker areas. Not a big knock against the site though, as this kind of thing isn't it's bread and butter.Anyway, I was hoping to get some more data, since I currently run two Theatre 550 Pros in my MCE box and wanted to see what the CPU utilization characteristics of the nVidia dual tuner solution are. The 550 Pros are a flawless solution, other than the fact that they take two slots, so it would have helped to get a thorough review to see if it was worth it to upgrade.
DukeTogo - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
Ditto, I wanted to like this article but...I thought it was over the top to jump on the 550 cards for only have one tuner.
As noted, not a problem - install two. We run 2 x Sapphire Theatrix 550's and they are great. If you can get the "Lite version" (ie. no remote) it's extra savings over the one with the IR remote or the ATI Elite version with the RF remote. Then you just use your MCE remote, assuming you use MCE.
I was interested in the power consumption. Subtracting off the 145W base, it seems that each config uses: (warning: validity?) I doubled the 550 solution for the case where one uses two cards.
From the article (-145W)
Idle Watch Record
NVIDIA 17 34 44
550 14 25 30
550x2 28? 50? 60?
I do own a PowerAngel so I could probably validate the 550 figures given the time on the weekend.
I'd be interested in heat output as well. Does one Nvidia card produce less heat than 2 550's ? I would assume so, but...
The channel change times was interesting, though not perhaps all that relevant if you use an IR blaster to an external set-top box. Probably only matters to those with a direct cable feed?
I'd also be very interested in an analysis of MediaSqueeze.
cpu? disk space? quality? interface/settings ? etc
Hoping to see a Part II for this article with some of the info people want to see.
mindless1 - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link
Something looks wrong with those numbers, a card that doesn't have MPEG2 encoding should cause a larger difference between idle (watching) and recording because it's taking the CPU out of HALT state quite a bit.Trisped - Sunday, May 21, 2006 - link
That would only be true if the card was compressing the data stream so it could be sent to the video card to be decompressed. With an AIW card the data is sent strait from the tuner to the GPU, and never has to leave the board. Otherwise they would have built in a converter so it wouldn't cripple your system bus when sending the data between cards.mindless1 - Sunday, May 21, 2006 - link
No, it would be true.IF the card does not have hardware compression, AND the video is being recorded to a compressed format, THEN the CPU _MUST_ being encountering a higher load than it otherwise would. So it is with most AIW, software MPEG2 is the default isn't it? regardless of what the default is, I think wek can presume the majority of AIW users are using a compressed format.