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.)
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nullpointerus - Sunday, May 21, 2006 - link
I think we're digressing. There are cards made and marketed to run cheapo bundled PVR apps, and there are people who buy and use those cheapo apps. And that's the audience I think this article was written for - in contrast to the more in-depth review Anandtech readers expected. That's as simple as I can make it.SaidiaDude - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
No ATSC support (HDTV over the air)? Mpeg4?LoneWolf15 - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
Yes...IF you purchase MCE. That locks me into a solution I don't want. What if I want to use SageTV, BeyondTV, Meedio, or (my personal favorite as its closed-source-but-free) GB-PVR? I could do this with one Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500, or I could buy two WinTV PVR-150's. It appears I can't do it with one of these cards, meaning I'm possibly stuck facing Microsoft DRM, a limited choice.
EDIT: I finally noticed at the end of your article that this can be used with other solutions. This is very unclear; do I still need Windows MCE even with SageTV/BeyondTV? Or can I get the drivers to work with XP Pro? You're running a site dedicated to enthusiasts, not novices; we want to know these things up front, not on the last page.
Your screenshots for each tuner were of different images, making it hard to make a true analysis of quality. I know it makes the article look pretty, but it hurts the comparison. And while you posted the power draw of these cards, you said nothing of CPU usage. I know all the cards have hardware encoders, but it's certainly possible that one might do a better job than the other. When I had a HTPC, I built it on a low-temperature low-budget CPU (Celeron 1.3GHz) and relied on the card to do the work for me (Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150), and it worked. I'm sure many would like to do the same (though maybe slightly higher-end than mine).
Side note: You may not know this by the way, but many people with TiVo have found hacks that let them do the things you say are not possible with a TiVo. I don't have one myself, but I can use my ReplayTV to transfer shows to a PC and archive them, and/or convert them to DVD with software. There are plenty of sites showing how to do this for serious DVR users, like the ones who read Anandtech. After all, you're talking about a part that someone can build a HTPC with; entry-level users will buy a pre-made Media Center PC, or a DVR, and leave it at that.
jelifah - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link
From the article:That's an outright lie. If you install TiVO Desktop on your computer you can pull shows from your TiVO to your computer AND you can place mpeg videos from your computer on to your TiVO.
Once you have the .tivo file on your computer you can watch them for free, or purchase Sonic DVD and burn them to DVD. Or just get a simple 'hack' that converts them to mpeg.
I'm not trying to be harsh, but to say it's "just not possible" is utter fallacy. And to even act like it's complicated would still be stretching the truth.
nullpointerus - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link
Um...society seems to have forgotten this at the moment, but for something to be a lie, it has to be a falsehood AND known as such by the teller. That's offensive, so I would suggest that you just resign yourself to saying, "That's not true," instead of saying, "That's an outright lie."http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=lie">http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=lie
As much as we like them, AT's writers are not omniscient. ;)
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 20, 2006 - link
I've edited this to reflect the intended meaning. You can't edit/record/etc. your TiVo movies without a PC. The standard TiVo + subscription gets you a box that records movies, and that's it. It's nice enough, but given the cost and the added flexibility a PC gives - and you'll be using a PC anyway with TiVo if you want to do anythin extra, right? - if you're interested in editing recordings and saving them to DVDR, it's generally a lot easier to just skip TiVo and go straight to a TV Tuner card.JarredWalton - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
Getting screenshots of the same image is rather difficult, unless you want to record a show using some other device (i.e. VCR) and capture that. I agree that different shots could have been used, though. Anyway, BeyondTV and SageTV do work, even though the card isn't advertised for such use. That's one of the odd things about the "DualTV MCE" - why is it MCE? Still, MCE is actually a pretty decent OS.GoatMonkey - Friday, May 19, 2006 - link
No. I use Beyond TV runs on XP Pro. I don't see any reason that using this card would make any difference. The MCE in the name of some of these cards is just a marketing thing.
To test I suppose you would really need a recorded video playing back from another computer outputting to coaxial, or have all of the devices installed in different computers side by side and grab screenshots of the same moments in the shows. Plugging a S-video cable into the back and playing a DVD into it might be easier.
I don't really know which method is best, but the article months ago about a different TV tuner card seemed to have some better comparison screenshots. I don't mean to put down the article's writer though, it was well written, but could have gone into some more details like that. I definitely appreciate coverage of the subject.
Trisped - Sunday, May 21, 2006 - link
I think he was asking about the drivers for the card. I know I just built a system for a friend. The mother board came with a Gb lan, but the drivers on the CD wouldn't work for MCE. Called tech support and they said that MCE wasn't supported for most of their boards. I wounder if the reverse is true for this tuner, do they supply drivers that will work in Pro or Home?nullpointerus - Sunday, May 21, 2006 - link
Well, if you download the drivers, this is what the installer says:http://www.uploadfile.info/uploads/395879b307.png">http://www.uploadfile.info/uploads/395879b307.png
I take it the "or compatible third party application" means that it'd work in plain XP SP2 with SageTV or BeyondTV for example.