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Product Review: Page (1) of 3 - 05/05/06

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NVIDIA DualTV MCE TV Tuner

Watch TV while recording up to two shows

By John Virata

The NVIDIA DualTV MCE is an analog TV tuner card designed to work with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs.   It offers DVD quality MPEG-2 recording at up to 10Mbit per second. The whole notion of the NVIDIA DualTV tuner is to give you the capability to watch TV while the computer records up to two shows at the same time. It also gives you the capability to pause, rewind and fast forward TV shows as well. Programs can be detailed with the free onscreen program guide. In addition, the NVIDIA DualTV tuner card can also capture S-Video and composite video streams for use in computer video editing applications.

Features and Benefits
The whole idea with a TV tuner equipped Media Center PC starts with the fact that it enables you to watch the TV shows that you want to watch, when you want to watch them. You are no longer bound by the time constraints that TV imposes on people. This means that you don't have to be home when your favorite show is on TV, as you can just record it. But isn't that what the VCR is for? Yes, but how many people actually set the record function on their VCR to dutifully record their favorite shows? And what about TiVo? TiVo enables you to do just that, but do you want to pay the subscriber fees for something that you can do with a TV tuner enabled Media Center PC? Many do and love TiVo for what it does.

The TV tuner card fits into a PCI slot.

Others, including Microsoft, would rather you record shows on the PC, and that is what a TV tuner excels at. The NVIDIA DualTV Tuner doesn't offer the breadth of features that TiVo offers, but you can still record live TV and up to two shows simultaneously. In addition, you aren't bound to watch the recorded shows on the TV or computer screen, because the NVIDIA DualTV bundle enables you to transfer those shows to a number of portable media players that support video, including Apple's video iPod and the Sony PlayStation Portable. With an Orb Networks subscription, you can also access your shows from anywhere, right over the Internet.

Here are some of the features and specifications to the NVIDIA DualTV card:

• Pause live TV, rewind, fast forward, or advance frame by frame.
• An internal splitter allows a single coaxial TV RF connection to support both tuners on the NVIDIA DualTV board.
• Advanced 3D Comb Filter -- Provides better separation of chrominance (color) and luminance (black and white) components of a video signal. Also reduces color bleeding, and generally delivers a sharper image while minimizing color quality degradation.
• 3D Noise Reduction - Reduces grainy artifacts in the TV signal while maintaining a sharp, non-blurry picture, and results in less video noise being encoded into MPEG2 digital video. (See DualTV MCE Technical Brief for details).
• MediaSqueeze Technology - records or "trans-rates" TV programs at lower bit rates while maintaining image integrity. Transrating is performed in DualTV hardware, removing the processing burden from the CPU. Saves disk space and delivers the highest picture fidelity and smallest recording file size available on the market today.
• NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder - permits highest quality video decoding within Windows Media Center Edition.
• High signal-to-noise-ratio tuner modules permit signal reception for both strong and weak antenna/cable signals. An inline RF amplifier significantly improve the reception of weak RF TV signals to avoid a grainy picture.
• ViXS Xcode II Multistream MPEG-2 Encoder -- Extremely high quality, fully programmable hardware-based video encoder.
• Capture, edit, and archive your videos -- Use the two included S-Video/audio input pairs to capture video from multiple devices including camcorders, VHS decks, and DVD players. Composite to S-Video dongle permits capturing from composite sources.
• Onscreen Program Guide - Find and choose the shows you want to watch or record with the convenience of the free onscreen program guide included with Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition.
• Key Connectivity - Coaxial TV RF input, two S-Video inputs (each with an associated stereo audio miniplug input), and coaxial FM antenna input, plus dual onboard A/V headers for connecting to OEM front-panel designs.
• Receives TV signal from off-air terrestrial broadcast (via RF antenna), cable TV (via RF input), and set-top boxes (via direct A/V inputs).
• FM Tuner - connect the included FM antenna to the FM antenna input and get full FM Radio support for Windows Media Center Edition, where you can pause, rewind, and record your favorite FM radio programs
• Simple installation. Pop in the board and let the DualTV MCE installation wizards walk through basic software installation, then follow standard setup procedures within Media Center Edition where both tuners are automatically discovered.
• Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) Certified -- guarantees the highest level of picture quality.
• Microsoft Certified -- Designed for Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition certification ensures Windows compatibility.