MCE TV Tuner Roundup: Featuring ATI's Theater 550 & NVIDIA's NVTV
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 12, 2005 6:26 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Fifth Place: NVIDIA NVTV
NVIDIA's NVTV launched alongside Media Center Edition 2005 as the first single-slot, dual tuner PCI card with MCE 2005 support. Despite the fact that it is a NVIDIA branded TV tuner, it uses a pair of LSI DVXPLORE codecs. These are the same codecs used on the eMuzed Maui board. However, given the large difference in image quality between the two boards, we'd say that NVIDIA's digital tuners are responsible for NVIDIA's 5th place showing in this comparison.
The convenience of having two tuners on a single PCI card is outweighed by the fact that the NVTV produced the most grainy image out of any of the cards in this comparison. The graininess was very detectable during normal viewing and it definitely impacted the experience.
NVTV
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250
The NVTV card also exhibited a noticeable amount of ghosting around the Headline news bar at the bottom of the screen, an effect that wasn't present on any of the other tuners.
Note the ghosting above the topmost yellow line
Our final complaint with the NVTV card was related to its displaying of text - there was a lot of noise in any text that appeared on the screen. The text problem was actually one that's common to most of the TV tuners in this roundup, but the combination of that, the ghosting and the grainy picture assured NVIDIA's NVTV a last place showing in this roundup.
Note the artifacts over the letters "NCAA"
At $130 - $140 for a dual tuner card, the NVTV is fairly affordable, but considering the issues that we've had with it, we would not recommend it.
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office boy - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
Interesting that the NVTV card here got the worst review and over at tech report got the best.I wonder if it has something to do with one being a dual tuner and the other well not.
Yeah bummer to not see the 150mce (and it's been in stock everywhere for a while, it's not in stock at newewgg cus they keep selling out, try amazon or buy.com)
Also I have to question the reasoning behind using actual cable TV for testing. The quality can vary so much, and we of course can have no expectation of what type of quality could be coming from your cable signal vs ours.
Use of some type of modulator to create a catv signal or a game system (like TR did) would seem to be a better choice to me, plus you could test with testing patterns.
dgkulzer - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
Oh, I would also go to the following website if you have a hauppauge card: http://www.shspvr.com/This site has more current drivers for the Hauppauge cards, plus a pretty good forum with useful info. If you get the 'beta lite' cd packages for your card you get a easy to install driver package.
dgkulzer - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
#48 I don't have digital cable but my understanding is that they can. The one thing you will need however is this: http://www.pcalchemy.com/product_info.php/cPath/38...and thats needed so you can change channels with the cable box.
I have a pvr-350 with gb-pvr and I couldnt be more happy with it :)
cer1 - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
Ok, I admit I'm a total noob when it comes to TV tuner cards. I've been looking at them for awhile, but can't get my ahead around what they can and can not do with regards to the signal source. I'm always a bit disappointed when TV Tuner reviews don't exactly describe the video source used for the tests (analog cable, digital cable, aerial, cable company, etc.).My impression, which in all probability is wrong, is that these cards require an analog source and that they can not be hooked up to a digital cable source (such as I have from Comcast). Is this true, or can these cards be used with a digital cable signal?
ShadowVlican - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
i agree with the posts that 150MCE should've been included... great price/performance ratio for that cardto the freak that said 150MCE isn't widely available.. ur a dumbass! i can even buy one RIGHT NOW in freakin CANADA...
so yea Anand, ok review, but it needs 150MCE badly
glennpratt - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
I swear no matter who reviews these cards, the results are always completely different. Some people find the NVTV cards to be terrible while other sites give em editors choice and the forums have equal amounts of hate and love for all the cards. Ugh, I'm ready for cablecards, I don't want to think about analog and IR blasters ever again... Cmon 2007!jamawass - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
Volunteer website? Do you know this site was valued at $100 million at one time? This is a business dude. BTW What happened to part 2 of the Myth TV review?WooDaddy - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
Just to let everyone know, the eMuzed Maui has NO third-party support other than MCE. I had one and couldn't get it to work with any other app out there including sage and snapstream stuff. I ended up picking up a Prolink TV7000 instead. Compatible with the Hauppauge PVR250. Works flawlessly, but difficult to find.DigitalWarrior - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
#36 (GoatMonkey) - For software to review, don't forget SageTV! This is superb PVR software.Good warning #28 (Kishkumen). A lot of 3rd party PVR software doesn't have support for ATI cards.
airfoil - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
The PVR 150 should have been included in this review - it seems like the best tuner out there for MCE. I suspect the outcome would have been different if a '150 was tested instead of the 250.