|
PowerColor 550 Theater Pro TV Tuner
Features
The ATI 550 chip pushes a 12-bit analog to digital converter which helps generate the improved picture. This, coupled with the 3D comb filter, enables the 550 to produce a much higher quality picture than has been previously seen. Listed as a feature, although not tested, is the fact that ATI will be providing this chipset in a PCI-express form factor. The lower power consumption of the 550 chip should also enable its use in power sensitive applications such as laptop computers. The PowerColor version I have today is of the PCI variety, but I imagine the PCI-E would be largely the same. This card is compatible with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Although most machines running that OS are pre-built, it is possible to get a hold of the OS and build your own. This is good to know if you are an owner of an existing Media Center PC or are considering building one yourself using that operating system. The three companies listed on ATI's website as software developers are Cyberlink, Intervideo and Microsoft. The software included with the PowerColor 550 is from Cyberlink. Testing For testing purposes, I chose to install the 550 into my test system which consists of:
All testing was done on Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2 installed as well as all security updates dated at or before 2/11/05 and with ATI's Catalyst 5.2 drivers. First I installed the software which came with the 550 Theater. This includes the drivers and the interface software. Installation was very simple and quick. The software from Cyberlink will only run on Windows XP, so don't even bother trying on anything else. I attempted to install it on a Windows 2000 box just to make sure, but all I got was an "Unable to Install" warning.  Once the software has been installed, it is time to set it up. I was really expecting to see more options within the software. Mainly I was looking for the location of saved video, the bit rate, and all the other great settings that come with such a powerful card. Apparently, I was very mistaken. The graphics are nice, but where are all the settings? Maybe they are further into the program after the initial setup? Nope. Apparently, the user doesn't need this type of information. This complete lack of setup functionality seriously hurts this card in my opinion. I will now get off my high horse about the COMPLETE LACK OF SETTINGS and focus more on the interface itself. Taking a page from Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition, Cyberlink has designed the interface to be bold with large graphics and easily readable type. The entire interface is designed to be easily visible up to 10 ft away. Through the use of contrasting colors and easily identifiable graphics, I think Cyberlink has definitely gotten that feature right.  After a successful setup, you will be greeted with an opening page when starting up the PowerCinema. This is essentially your starting point. From within this program you can get to all of the many different features this software supports, including: TV, Movies, Music, Radio, and Pictures. Each option takes you further into that particular functionality. Although the Cyberlink software is very nice to look at and run, I do have a strong desire for more settings. For instance, when recording TV, the only options I get under quality are Good, Better, Best, etc. This is nice, but I would like to choose the save location and it would be nice to know what bit rates the different settings represent. I have about 20 GB of space on another drive and would really like to use it. There is probably a registry key hiding somewhere, but you shouldn't have to figure out some obscure method of doing this. This is really just a software limitation - which leaves room for hope; hope that there will be an update in the near future. Navigating the software is pretty easy with the included remote. Sitting across the room, I have no problems seeing what I am searching through. Setting up a schedule to record a program is also easy, similar to some on-screen displays for VCRs, and not the ones still blinking 12:00 AM either! Sometimes I found that I was fumbling for the right key order to navigate, but I think with time it will be second nature.  TV The biggest draw for the 550 Theater is the ability to watch TV. Navigating to its screen, you will be presented with a modest size window to the right of the menu. From here you can watch TV, setup a schedule, and view previously recorded programs. There is also a feature called TV Preview which generates small screen caps of the various channels. Unfortunately, that feature takes soooo long to generate a pic that it would take less time to just scroll through the channels yourself. The minute I hit this setting I was frantically searching for the button to make it stop. This is a feature that sounds great on paper, but the implementation left much to be desired. Until the screen caps are almost instantaneous, don't bother.  The most important button on the menu is obviously the full screen button. This will expand the TV picture to the size of your monitor, which is always a good thing. Besides full screen TV, you do have the ability to do what is called desktop TV. This replaces your wallpaper with the TV signal, placing all your desktop icons over the picture as if the TV were your wallpaper... This works well if you want to do other things beside watch TV on your computer, unless of course you have a million things on the desktop and can't see your wallpaper in the first place. You also have the ability to resize the picture and move it around like any standard window on your desktop. I was happy to discover that the 550 Theater handles most of the load of the video stream. Watching TV kept CPU load between 3-5%, which is normal for this machine. Moving the window around caused a significant CPU hit, but it returned to normal after you stop screwing with it. Even in desktop mode, you can run other software without any form of lag. The only drawback to multitasking with your TV on is that you can't see the picture! FM The FM tuner, like everything else, is easy to setup. You just have to navigate to it and hit the scan feature; this is similar to every other digital radio I have ever used. You do have the ability to change from 0.1 or 0.2 MHz scanning range, otherwise, there really isn't too much to mess with. Once the stations are dialed in, you can rename them from within the software, although it would have been nice to incorporate the auto-naming functionality into the software. Many radio stations broadcast their call letters in a way that certain radio receivers will properly display them. Unless you know your radio stations well or just don't care about naming them, this isn't an incredible hit to the feature list. One of the nicely hidden features within the FM software is the ability to record live radio to WMA or WAV files. I am somewhat surprised to see such functionality, especially with all the lawsuits going around over digital music. You are able to choose the quality and duration of the recording event and then play it back later. Playback was of equal quality when I tested it. Personally I would rather save the hard drive space for my TV recording, but it's nice to have the feature.  Music The music functionality of the software is not that powerful. It essentially takes music found in your "My Music" folder and presents it to you. If you have music on other drives, you can browse to it, but there does not seem to be any way to add music to a master playlist. The software pretty much just recognizes stuff by folders and that is it. It did recognize when I had music loaded into Winamp and actually brought up its playlist, which was nifty. I would have liked to see the software catalogue my music from other locations rather than just relying on its current one. I have far more music on a network drive, and in order to play it I had to scroll to the drive, select it, and then hunt for the artist I was looking for. In the end, pretty much any number of free music players will have far more functionality than this software.  Pictures Similar to the music functionality, the picture function takes pictures on your hard drive and presents them in a slideshow. Drawing from the "My Pictures" folder in XP, you have the ability to create a slideshow of pictures. In its settings, you can define the number of seconds to wait in between each picture. Again, I wouldn't consider this to be a great feature. It might be more entertaining than the casual screensaver, but that is a user preference anyway. Quality Check The quality of the Powercolor 550 Theater was good. My biggest concern when dealing with TV tuners is their stability. I have used other software with other cards that seems to function properly, but will either not recognize the stream or just plain change settings around. Besides the software itself, the remote control becomes an even more integral part of the computer. With a setup that can be seen from 10 feet away, your entire functionality is now driven by the remote. I did experience a failure to some degree with the remote control. I had no up/down channel or volume control, but the numbers worked and I could directly program the station I wanted to view. There were a few occasions I just sat there pressing buttons because I didn't know what to do next. I would rather have a smaller remote with a few important buttons rather than a larger one with stuff that makes no sense. The up/down channel buttons are well placed as is the volume control, but if you want to directly type a number in, you will have to reposition your hand. I found it to be a bit clumsy at times. The power button on the remote worked well, when pressed it put the computer into standby. Of course once in standby, you can't use the remote, so you have to go hit the keyboard or the power button on the machine. I would rather see the power button control the software rather than the whole OS. One of the big draws for this card is its ability to generate a high quality picture. I can most definitely say that the picture is far better with the Powercolor 550 than any other TV tuner I have seen. Using my Compro VideoMate USB as a comparison, I could tell a difference when plugged into the same cable outlet. The 550 Theater does produce a vastly superior image than what I am used to. I would have liked to be able to turn on and off all the 550 theaters different functions to see the difference it would make, but since the software seems to be lacking so many other settings I was out of luck. Overall, the software was very visually appealing, but that was about it. I will give Cyberlink an A+ for design and graphics but a D for functionality. I would rather have great software to watch TV and not mess with the other items than have what they delivered. Cyberlink is most definitely on the right track though, and software is far easier to change than hardware. In the end, the software really lowers my opinion of this card. The underlying hardware that ATI has developed is excellent; it is just a matter of getting the software up to par now...
Related Reviews TV Tuners / Media Receivers September 22, 2008
TV Tuners / Media Receivers September 3, 2007
TV Tuners / Media Receivers April 2, 2007
Add Comment
14 User Comments 1 - Posted by
SAMSAMHA
on February 21, 2005 - 2:42 am VERY NICE card. Cool review.
2 - Posted by
Rich
on February 21, 2005 - 8:38 am Thanks, yes the card is nice. Too bad the software doesn't live up to it though. :(
3 - Posted by
Guest
on February 22, 2005 - 3:02 am If all you are comparing to is the USB VideoMate, you better make that clear in your recommendation - "better than the VideoMate". Please compare to other cards before saying this card could "revolutionize the quality of TV on the computer." My findings are the card is a major disappointment. Image quality was not nearly as good as the PVR150 or even the NVTV.
4 - Posted by
Guest
on February 22, 2005 - 8:32 am Same as the above comment, you kept saying the software "lacks setting" for about 5 times, but other than it does not allows you to choose save video folder and bitrate(which average user has no idea what it meant), you failed to identify precisely what is lacking in settings, and what is wrong with the software for that matter. Similarly, how is MCE superior compared to it? A good review requires not only judgement but a better support of the statement.
5 - Posted by
Guest
on February 22, 2005 - 11:36 am I'd like to throw my two cents in here and mention that the AIW 9600 uses ATI's proprietary Multimedia Center (MMC) software suite. This has excellent configurability, and it is a source of great consternation to ATI devotees (like myself) that the company has not seen fit to make this chip compatible with it. All the previous ATI Theater chips (100, 200) have worked wonderfully with MMC, and it was expected this new generation 550 Pro chip would be king of the heap. ATI must've had a lapse of reason on this one... We're now waiting on the new version of MMC 9.0.6 to address this shortcoming. 6 - Posted by
Guest
on February 22, 2005 - 10:28 pm Due to the time to market need, ATI only certified 550 on MCE and WinXP, not Win2K Also, ATI did not expose proprietary functions to external software vendors, hence the lack of ability for customization. MMC is a 2-foot application, it is not a comparable product to that of a 10-foot MCE-like application. 7 - Posted by
Guest
on February 24, 2005 - 8:02 am Exactly which Compro model did you compare the PowerColor to? Was it the "VideoMate Live USB2" or an older USB model ? Also, have you compared it to The Lifeview Walker Ultra ?
8 - Posted by
Guest
on February 25, 2005 - 11:09 pm How do you compare the quality of the USB2 Compro and the PowerColor when capturing VHS ? And how would you rate either with conventional methods which capture VHS as AVI or Dv and then have it recoded to mpeg-1 for VCDs ? Is there a noticeable difference? thanks
9 - Posted by
SlipSand
on March 3, 2005 - 4:37 pm Do you think it would be possible to buy your own software that would use the card properly?
10 - Posted by
DnD
on March 3, 2005 - 10:12 pm That would be specially made I think and cost lots.
11 - Posted by
Rich
on March 3, 2005 - 10:54 pm Since this card is so new, I imagine it will take some time for third party software vendors to integrate it into their new packages. That is assuming that ATI is even willing to let that happen.
12 - Posted by
SlipSand
on March 4, 2005 - 6:16 pm Ohh I was just wondering I wanted a TV tuner for football season next year.
13 - Posted by
Guest
on April 21, 2005 - 2:24 am Software is so bad I have complained to ATI since I got it and it is not as functional as cheaper ATI cards. The picture is not that much better so go with another card unless all you want to do is watch TV, and if you do a cheap TV beats the picture quality anyway.
14 - Posted by
Guest
on June 9, 2005 - 8:38 pm Ditto to all the previous posts. This card is so bad that I already return my to Newegg. The Cyberlink software and the immature driver development from ATI kills what otherwise could have been a great Video Card.
Add Comment To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields. |
Recent Articles Editorials March 15, 2010
Editorials August 27, 2009
Editorials August 18, 2009
Editorials March 17, 2009
Recent News Good Old Games Mar. 21, 2010 - 12:43 pm
Jason Bradbury Mar. 19, 2010 - 10:52 pm
Rock Paper Shotgun Mar. 19, 2010 - 10:44 pm
joystiq Mar. 19, 2010 - 6:58 pm
Tom's Hardware Mar. 19, 2010 - 4:42 pm
Rock Paper Shotgun Mar. 18, 2010 - 11:58 pm
Fudzilla Mar. 18, 2010 - 11:57 pm
|
|||||||||||||||
