TV Tuner Comparisons

How does the NVIDIA DualTV MCE compare with the ATI Theater 550 Pro and All-In-Wonder series of cards? We'll start with power consumption, and we tested each of the three cards at three different states: while the system is idle, while watching live TV, and while recording live TV. Here are the results.

System Power Draw
Idle Watching TV Recording TV
NVIDIA DualTV MCE 162 179 189
ATI MSI Theater 550 Pro 159 170 175
ATI X1800 AIW 154 172 172

For reference, the power draw of the system without a TV tuner card installed (excluding the AIW) is 145 Watts. We used an X1800 GTO for the main graphics card with the DualTV and Theater 550 cards, in order to keep the power draws as close as possible to that of the AIW card. We can see from the table that the Theater 550 and AIW draw less power than the DualTV while watching and recording live TV, which makes sense given the DualTV's ability to record two sources as opposed to the other cards' one.

Something else we're interested in looking at is channel switching speed between these three cards, as this is something that can vary between different TV tuner cards. The type of tuner on the card can affect this, and all three of these cards use silicone tuners, which can be slower than analog ones, but take up less space on the board. Interestingly, we found that the AIW had the fastest channel switch time at about one second. The Theater 550 had the slowest channel switch time at about three seconds, and the DualTV MCE was slightly faster than the Theater 550 at about 2 and a half seconds. While three seconds doesn't sound like a very long time at all, it can be a very annoying delay if you like channel surfing.

Between these three TV Tuners, there are some major differences aside from power and channel switching speed. Of course the AIW is a much different solution than the other two in that it is a complete 3D graphics card with a built-in TV tuner. The DualTV and Theater 550 are stand alone TV tuners meant to operate alongside a separate graphics card. Having a graphics card and TV Tuner combined can be good or bad, depending on the personal preference. Some people would rather have the freedom of being able to switch graphics cards while keeping the same TV tuner, while others may prefer the combination of the two in order to keep the extra PCI/PCI-E slot open.

Note that the Theater 550 is available in both PCI and PCI-E X1 versions; at present, it is the only PCI-E TV tuner on the market. Also, the X1800 AIW is a very large part and wouldn't fit very well in a compact system, though to be fair ATI offers AIW cards in a wide range of performance and size. One more thing to note about the AIW cards is that they don't have MPEG-2 encoding in hardware, which means they won't work with Windows MCE. The Theater 550 Pro and NVIDIA DualTV include this feature and work fine with MCE 2005.

The Theater 550 Pro is much more similar to the DualTV MCE, with the major difference being the ability to only record one source as opposed to the DualTV's two. Coupled with Windows MCE, the DualTV's capabilities and ease-of-use outweigh those offered by the Theater 550 Pro and it's included PowerCinema 3 (or 4, depending on which T550 card you purchase) software, but the fact that the DualTV MCE doesn't include any other software is a problem.

Below are some screenshot captures of each of these cards' live video for image quality comparison.

NVIDIA DualTV


ATI Theater 550 Pro


ATI X1800 AIW


We can see that there doesn't seem to be much difference between the quality of the DualTV MCE and the Theater 550 Pro, but with the AIW, the image looks a little sharper than the others. This is especially noticeable in the writing on two of the images. Overall though, the differences aren't that great and all of these cards provide good quality video with live TV. Unfortunately, HDTV isn't supported for any of you that want that feature, but of course the number of HD broadcasts and channels is still significantly lower than the number of standard analog channels.

A simple screenshot doesn't always convey quality as well as a video, so we have also created a BitTorrent share with video samples from the three cards. Download the torrent file, and then use your favorite BitTorrent client. Total size of the videos files is 22.3MB. Note that we have the original MCE generated file for the DualTV as well as a high quality re-encode to standard MPEG-2. (The DVR-MS extension doesn't work with all video players, but it works with WMP10.)

The Card Final Words
Comments Locked

68 Comments

View All Comments

  • Johnmcl7 - Sunday, May 21, 2006 - link

    That is correct, out of the box MCE cannot be joined to a domain although it can be modified to do so but at the cost of losing media extenders. Microsoft clearly wanted to keep businesses using Pro and MCE for home users.

    John
  • XMan - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link

    "The PVR-500 requires two separate CATV inputs, however, rather than splitting the signal internally."

    Ehh . . . no, the PVR-500 splits internally. The second input jack is for FM radio, just like the NVTV.

    And the latest Hauppauge drivers have fixed a lot of the issues folks are having. I'm using two PVR-500's on MCE 2K5with the 23348 drivers and they work marvelously.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link

    Crud. That was my error. I'll fix it - thanks.
  • justauser - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link

    I guess that people who come to Anadtech have a strong technical background.

    Is anybody still watching analog TV out of this group? I haven't seen an anaolog program for over two years - in fact I find it impossible to watch & listen to analog. Surely every tech person has their HDTV & surround sound set up, don't they?

    What's this nonsense about limited channels on OTA HD? We get about 40 in LA, of which about 15 have content I'm interested in. I don't bother with cable.

    More nonsense about trouble receiving OTA HD. If you can get an analog signal you can surely get an HD digital one - do you realize how much more power is used to broadcast HD? It can be over 1 MW! When setting up an HD set you can test the HD picture with a set top antenna. You get an HD signal even when you can't see any analog channels.

    So, dump reviews of analog tuners. People who buy them have limited tech knowledge and will probably never get them working anyway (like my neighbor who watches stretched analog on his HDTV and has got used to actors with fat heads, but nevermind HDTV is great!).
  • Trisped - Sunday, May 21, 2006 - link

    Most people don't live in a big metorpolitan area, so they will be lucky to have 1 or 2 HD channels broadcast in the area.
    HDTV cable is rather expensive compared to the analog or even digital, and the fact that most channels are a sick mix of high and low def makes the veiwing experince undesireable (at least that is what my local friends say).

    I don't own a DTV or HDTV tuner. Instead I own a high quality PC. I have been thinking of upgrading to an HDTV tuner, but the only one I have heard of is the ATI HDTV tuner which is PCI and has was reported to have some compatability problems. Since this is a first gen card that is to be expect, but I don't want to pay $100+ to be part of the beta testing. I will wait till there is a PCIe version that seems to work well with what I use, then I will upgrade.
  • nullpointerus - Sunday, May 21, 2006 - link

    Anandtech reviewed some other brands of HDTV tuners in their last roundup:

    http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2634&p...">http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2634&p...

    Unfortunately, there's nothing in that review that meets all your requirements.
  • Schugy - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link

    Of course I use DVB-T with MythTV, xine or dvbtune+mplayer. DVB-S is no option because some people want to make money with encrypting free tv. That guys must be kidding.
  • austonia - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link

    checked nvidia's store and was dissapointed to find out that the package that comes with an MCE remote costs $50 more! $219... ugh.

    http://store.nvidia.com/product.aspx?sku=2866288&a...">http://store.nvidia.com/product.aspx?sku=2866288&a...

  • gman81 - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link

    this website's inability to take your comment or this nvidia tuner review. Both are lame. (the comment window wipes your text if you're not careful or when you click Post Comment, it has a "server error"). What junk.
  • nullpointerus - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link

    I think when you wait to long to hit the "post comment" button, there is a server error. No idea why.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now