Free Tv Tuner

With the Radeon 9700, ATI finally regained its place at the top of the 3D graphics performance food-chain. But for years, ATI dominated the area of all-in-one 'ginsu' cards. These are products that combine 3D graphics, a TV tuner with coax input, and video input via both S-Video and composite connectors.

Last year nVidia launched the Personal Cinema, the company's initial run at ATI's All-in-Wonder products. It was a good first attempt, but didn't have enough right stuff to unseat ATI. And despite promises, a version never shipped in the US using a GeForce 4 Ti GPU -- instead most Personal Cinema offerings used the wheezing GeForce 2 MX.

So nVidia went back to the drawing board, redesigned the Personal Cinema, and along the way wrote its own DVD player, called NVDVD. This software now ships with Personal Cinema, and nVidia thinks it's so good, you can buy it on its website as well.

So has nVidia learned enough from its early mistakes to knock ATI out of the top spot? Or has ATI made enough improvements to hold on to the lead? In this article we put nVidia's eVGA Personal Cinema up against ATI's All-In-Wonder 9000 Pro – both of which retail for $199. eVGA has become one of nVidia's key North American board makers, and the company was the first to market with a product based on Personal Cinema 2 with NVDVD 2.0. ATI has begun selling its chips to other boardmakers, but in the U.S., ATI still is the sole maker of the All-in-Wonder products.

These products are designed for users that want to watch TV on a PC, or bring video in for editing and burning to DVD or CD – and also need a new graphics card. ATI, Happauge, and others sell TV-Tuner only cards for a little less money. But by combining the two together, you get some advantages that a two card solution won't provide.

In this article, we first take a look at the feature list for each product, and then discuss how we tested. We provide benchmark results for 3D performance comparisons, and then dive into the usage experience. We end our story with conclusions and a recommendation on which is the better product. You can navigate through the story using the Next Page> links, or the table of contents – both at the bottom of the page.

So which should you buy? Let's dig in and find out.

Here's how each product's feature list stacks up:

  EVGA Personal Cinema ATI All-in-Wonder 9000 Pro Price $199 $199 Hardware     GPU GeForce 4 MX 440 Radeon 9000 Pro Memory 64MB 64MB DirectX Compatibility for 3D Some support for DX8 vertex shaders DX 8.1 vertex and pixel shaders TV Tuner Philips FI1236 Philips FI1236 Inputs Stereo RCA audio, composite and S-Video (on breakout pod), coax video (on back panel), internal audio input connector on board Stereo RCA audio, composite and S-Video (on breakout pod), coax video (on back panel) Outputs Stereo RCA audio, composite and S-Video (on breakout pod), DVI-I (comes w/VGA adapter), second VGA (can drive two PC displays), internal audio output connector on board DVI-I (comes w/VGA adapter), Composite and S-Video, coax S/PDIF (all on back panel) Connects to Sound Card How? External line-in connector External line-in connector Remote Control RF RF w/some programmable buttons Patch Cables Stereo audio/composite video (RCA), S-Video None       Software     TiVO App WinDVR ATI TV Player DVD Player NVDVD 2.0 ATI DVD Player TV App WinDVR ATI TV Player Digital VCR App WinDVR GuidePlus+ and ATI TV Player EPG App TitanTV Guide Plus+ 10-ft. UI for use with TV? eVGA MediaMenu MMC 8.5 with EazyLook, downloadable for free from ATI's site Video Editing App Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2.0SE and VideoStudio 6.0 SE Pinnacle Studio SE Bundled Games Ghost Recon (full version), America's Army None

A quick review of the feature list shows that the two companies have studied each other's products, resulting in many more similiarities than differences. Most of the differences center around the software bundles, since ATI mostly uses its own multimedia apps, while nVidia goes outside.

ATI's own software applications are getting a bit long in the tooth now, while nVidia's apps are mostly new – although you end up with crippled versions of Ulead's Movie Factory and Video Studio.

nVidia also includes a full version of Ghost Recon, a very well-done tactical simulation from RedStorm Entertainnment. Although this game has been shipping for some time, it's still a nice added bonus to have in the box.

On the hardware side, the GPUs powering these two products are very different. ATI's Radeon 9000 is DirectX 8-capable, while nVidia's GeForce 4 MX, for all intents and purposes, is not. Yes, nVidia's part can do "CPU assist" on some vertex shader operations, but it lacks any kind of pixel shader hardware. In addition, this board doesn't even use the fastest GeForce 4 MX nVidia makes, the MX 460. Instead eVGA opted for the MX 440, cheaper, but slower too.

On the plus side, the Personal Cinema includes a VGA and a DVI-I port – with VGA adapter -- which means it supports two simultaneous monitors. The All-In-Wonder supports just one.

In addition, the eVGA Personal Cinema designers include an internal audio line-out connector, so you can hook up to your sound card without using its external line-in jack – a nice feature we'd like to see ATI emulate.

When it comes to remotes, nVidia has learned a lesson from ATI. With the first Personal Cinema, NVidia built its own IR-based remote from the ground up. But it suffered from IR's line-of-sight limitations, and lack of universal remote features to drive other A/V devices. So in a case of if-you-can't-beat-'em-copy-'em, nVidia now gets its Personal Cinema remotes from the same company that makes the AIW remote for ATI-- X10. The remotes are virtually identical now, although nVidia has implemented some different key mappings, and its configuration applet includes some different features. NVidia's remote also lacks ATI's plugin architecture that allows third-party developers -- like us, with our PC Magazine Media Console utility -- to design key mappings to specifically drive their own apps.

With a price point under $200, and all the features and functionality stuffed in, compromise is inevitable. 3D performance, for both companies, takes the first hit. The All-In-Wonder holds a clear advantage, though, because it can run DX8 pixel shaders, whereas the GeForce 4 MX cannot. So rather than belabor the obvious point that these are not optimal 3D solutions, we instead focused most of our attention on video-related features such as TV recording, TiVO functionality and ease of use.

We used our Intel test system for all the testing, since it is the faster of our two test beds. It's currently loaded up with: Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz (533MHz FSB) Intel 865PERL motherboard using Intel 865 chipset 512MB 400MHz DDR SDRAM Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer 3com 10/100 NIC 40GB ATA-100 EIDE hard-drive Toshiba DVD-ROM KDS Avitron 21" monitor Fresh install of Windows XP Pro with System Pack 1 and the latest system updates as of 4/25/03 DirectX 9.0a

You may have noticed that we're no longer using the Intel 850EMV2 motherboard that has powered our Intel reference system for quite sometime. We're now moving to Canterwood, and this motherboard will also be at the heart of the next incarnation of the Build-It: Extreme TiVO system we'll be telling you about soon. We'll be using the Intel 875P-based D875PBZ motherboard for high-end 3D graphics testing for future stories.

For 3D testing, we decided to test using only three games, Serious Sam SE (OpenGL), Comanche 4 (Direct3D), and UT 2003 (Direct3D). We tested at 1280x960 for Comanche 4 and UT 2003, and at 1280x1024 for Serious Sam SE. First, we tested with AF and AA disabled to get a baseline score, and then enabled 4X AA and 8X AF to see how much of a hit it would introduce, and to determine if frame rates would be at all playable with these features turned on.

We also spent a good amount of time just working and playing with the different apps to judge the overall product's performance. Much of this is subjective observation, and cannot be benchmarked in numerical terms.

Lets look at benchmark performance first, and then move on to the more subjective results

Neither card exactly wowed us with awe-inspiring performance here, but that was expected. What we didn't know was how surpringly well the GeForce 4 MX 440 would do versus the Radeon 9000 Pro. Bear in mind that on Comanche 4 for example, the two GPUs aren't doing the same amount of rendering work, since the R9000 has to handle pixel shader operations for water reflections that the GeForce 4 MX 440 gets to bypass since it lacks hardware. Here are the numbers from the three games we used:

  EVGA Personal Cinema EVGA Personal Cinema ATI All-in-Wonder 9000 Pro ATI All-in-Wonder 9000 Pro Radeon 9600 Radeon 9600 Frames/sec BASELINE 4X AA & 2X AF BASELINE 4X AA & 2X AF BASELINE 4X AA & 2X AF Comanche4 19.11 6.36 21.1 8.92 48.48 24.6 Serious Sam SE 35.2 11.5 35.9 22.2 37.2 37.05 UT 2003 15.2 5 13.82 12.93 29.2 20.7

What you can see here is that the two cards deliver comparable frame rates when running at 12x9/12x10 with both AA and AF turned off. We should mention that on Comanche 4, the EVGA card isn't doing any pixel shader operations, since the GeForce 4 MX 440 doesn't have hardware support for pixel shaders. We're still looking into the unusually high score that the AIW 9000 Pro got on Serious Sam using the baseline configuration, as it seems to be out of alignment with the AIW 9000 Pro's other numbers. As it turns out, the EVGA card supports a maximum setting of 2X AF, so that's we were forced to use in our testing. What's evident is that neither the AIW 9000 Pro or the EVGA Personal Cinema can deliver sufficient performance when both 4X AA and AF (8X for ATI, 2X for EVGA) are enabled. And while both cards do reasonably well when AA and AF are turned off, they both still trail the Radeon 9600 Pro, which we include for comparative purposes. However, the EVGA card is running just about even with the R9600 Pro on the Serious Sam test, although once AA and AF are enabled, the EVGA's performance drops off considerably. Short story long, neither of these ginsu cards is going to bowl you over with their 3D performance, but we knew that going in.

It's painfully clear that neither of these cards will be the best choice for 3D gaming at 1280x1024/1280x960. They just don't have the horsepower, especially if you want to run with either AA or AF enabled. To be fair, the GeForceMX 440 only has two AF options: none or 2X, whereas ATI has none, 2X, 4X and 8X. Even so, ATI is well ahead on the test with AF and AA enabled on two of three tests. But the take-away here is that you're going to want to run these cards at more like 800x600 or 1024x768 to get good 3D performance from them.

If you want more performance in a ginsu-style card, ATI is your only option now. ATI has an entire range of All-in-Wonder products that spans all the way up to its fastest GPU, the Radeon 9700. nVidia, for the second time, seems to have shot behind the duck.

We have heard from nVidia that GeForceFX 5600 Ultra-based Personal Cinema products will arrive over the coming months, but no board maker has shared concrete plans with us.

It's all a matter of tradeoffs, and what users interested in a ginsu card can (and can't) live without. To hit sub-$200 price-points, product designers have to come up with a compelling product while at the same time staying inside a bill-of-materials budget, and it's pretty much a zero-sum game: add $10 to the GPU cost, subtract $10 somewhere else. For now, at this price-point, ATI seems to have better balanced its 3D performance while maintaining the rest of its feature set. And if you want to pay more money, you can get faster 3D performance in a ginsu-style product from ATI.

On the other hand, EVGA's inclusion of Ghost Recon adds about $30 of value to their package, since the game currently retails for that price. (NOTE: we did see it for, get this, $9 bucks on www.dirtcheapsoftware.com, and if you haven't gotten this game yet, and are into tactical sims, grab a copy while you can!)

Product: All-In-Wonder 9000 Pro Web Site: ATI Pro: Good performance, solid software, and DX8 3D hardware Con: EPG and TV apps need to be better integrated; no DTS support in DVD player, no full-screen UI out of the box (can be downloaded from ATI) Summary:       Well-made suite of multimedia apps holds the whole thing together (although some consolidation is in order), along with a very good entry-level/intermediate video editing solution. and solid hardware Price: $199, check prices Score:

3D Performance: The All-In-Wonder clearly holds an advantage here, with its built-in pixel shader hardware. Because games query cards to determine whether pixel shader hardware is present, the Personal Cinema might actually deliver better frame rates. However, it lacks shader hardware, and those frames will probably look worse.

As for performance, the two cards are surprisingly even in terms of frame rate, although neither delivers especially good performance running at 1280x1024 or 1280x960, even with AA and AF disabled.

DVD Playback: ATI has had adaptive de-interlacing in its parts since Radeon 8500, and ATI has typically held a video quality lead. Nvidia addressed some of these issues with its GeForce 4 MX GPU, which added adaptive de-interlacing to the mix.

However, ATI has been doing it longer, and so gets credit for being the first to market with that feature. During playback of a set of Dolby Digital cinematic trailers, we saw vivid colors and a sharp overal image. We did not notice any 'combing' artifacts that the weave de-interlacing technique can sometimes produce, nor did we see any bluriness that the bob de-interlacing technique can sometimes cause.

Unfortunately, neither NVDVD nor ATI's DVD player support DTS decoding, and so for that you'll need to use an application like WinDVD or PowerDVD.

TV Viewing/TiVO: ATI's application interfaces have undergone few changes since the arrival of ATI's Remote Wonder, which accompanies almost every All-in-Wonder product sold. While viewing TV we were annoyed by a weakening volume level when time-shifting was enabled. Once we turned time-shifting off, the volume returned to its previous level.

In addition, there's no way for the All-in-Wonder to directly drive satellite TV or digital cable receivers, leaving those users out of the unattended recording capabilities.

EPG: ATI uses GuidePlus+, which can be navigated with the Remote Wonder. We liked being able to navigate the program listing grid using the DVD menu navigation buttons (up/down/left/right/OK). However, we found the transition between the EPG app and the TV app to be overly jarring. ATI has used its own TV app and GuidePlus+ for quite some time now, so this rough edge should have been fixed some time ago. We also found GuidePlus+'s search engine interface messy, to the point that finding a show was a real PITA. In the end we found it easier to go to TV Guide's web site, do the search there, and then find the program in GuidePlus+'s grid afterward.

Video Capture/Editing: The move to Pinnacle Studio SE here was a definite upgrade from the previous versions of VideoStudio included with past All-in-Wonder products. Studio SE comes with many cool 3D effects, and allows you to make DVD menus and DVD discs, creating a kind of 'soup to nuts' solution where you can do an entire project start to finish. The software's user interface is easily navigated, although moving video clips around in the timeline is not as easy as it ought to be. It was a real nuisance, actually.

Remote: Again, the choice to use an RF remote was a case of ATI leading and nVidia following. The only downside to RF is that you can't use it to drive IR-based components in your home entertainnment center. Because it works around walls, you can even use it to drive a PC that's sitting in another room. ATI has also allowed you to assign one of 16 unique IDs to a remote, in case you're using more than one in the same house. When a remote has its own ID, a PC assigned to use the remote will listen for that remote's ID. ATI also sells this remote as a standalone product for $50 bucks.

Miscellany: ATI's other homegrown apps, which include a VCD, CD, and media File player are easy enough to use, although these four apps could easily be condensed down to a single uber-media player capable of handling all of these different data types. One annoyance is that ATI's CD player has no ability to ping a CDDB database, or FreeDB, to retrieve CD album/track information.

ATI's software also features a docking panel that launches on startup. The size can be adjusted, but it's still too small for the 10-foot UI necessary when using a standard TV. However, ATI has recently shipped Multimedia Center 8.5, which features a full-screen UI that ATI has dubbed EasyLook. The CD that arrives with the AIW 9000 Pro has MMC 8.1 on it, however, and you can download MMC 8.5 with EazyLook for free from ATI's web site.

3D Performance: In our baseline testing, the GeForce MX 440 ran close to even with the Radeon 9000 Pro, however once we enabled AA and AF, its performance fell off considerably. To get any kind of acceptable performance, only run this card at 800x600 or at most 1024x768. The lack of pixel shader hardware is unfortunate, and here ATI clearly leads against nVidia.

We expect to see Personal Cinema products using higher-end nVidia GPUs such as the GeForceFX 5600 in the near future. If you want faster 3D performance today, one of ATI's more expensive All-in-Wonder products is really your only choice.

DVD Playback: One of the most notable additions to the Personal Cinema is nVidia's own DVD player called, wait for it, NVDVD. Actually nVidia has already developed version 2.0, which is available for free trial from nVidia's site, and can be bought for $40. According to nVidia, this DVD player was written from the ground up to take advantage of specific hardware features found in nVidia GPUs. It includes bookmarks, and a feature very similar to ATI's Video Desktop, where live video becomes your desktop background, allowing you to pretend to get some work done while watching your favorite DVD.

Another cool feature with NVDVD is the ability to assign functionality to the mouse-wheel. During our testing we found that using it to jog/shuttle forward and backward worked well, making video scrubbing a snap. This is a cool feature that ATI will likely magically 'discover' in the next release of its Multimedia Center software.

Unfortunately, neither NVDVD nor ATI's DVD player support DTS decoding, and so for that you'll need to use WinDVD or PowerDVD.

The GeForce 4 MX had one redeeming feature not found in the more powerful GeForce 4 Ti series of GPUs: nVidia's Video Processing Engine (VPE). This feature has, however, been revived in the GeForceFX line. The VPE does adaptive de-interlacing, choosing on a per-pixel basis whether a bob or weave technique will produce the best image quality. In addition, the nVidia driver also includes Digital Vibrance Control (DVC), which appears to adjust a combination of hue, saturation and brightness. We found that tweaking DVD playback with a single control improved image quality considerably.

EPG: Personal Cinema now uses TitanTV, a web-based set of listings that can inter-operate with a wide variety of PVR/TV apps including InterVideo's WinDVR, Hauppauge's WinTV PVR, ShowShifter, WinFast PVR, and PCTV Deluxe/Rave/Pro. The EPG can be invoked from EVGA's own MediaMenu applet, which attempts to provide a 10-foot UI for use with TV. Once launched however, you can't walk the grid using the nVidia's remote control DVD navigation buttons. This is a mouse-driven web UI, so you're going to have to use the remote's mouse cursor and buttons to tweak programs which can be difficult from afar. Also, the grid window launched by EVGA's MediaMenu is too small, and cannot be expanded. If you launch a web browser and go to TitanTV's home page, you can then maximize the window to see more of the grid at one time.

The EPG button in WinDVR takes you to TitanTV's home page, not to the program grid, which is what you'd want to see. This setting is hard-wired apparently, since we could find no provision in WinDVR's config menus to change the URL for the EPG page. A minor nit, but an annoyance that necessitates unnecessary button pushes, and also requires a constant connection to the Internet.

TV viewing/TiVO: WinDVR 2.0 works well as a TiVO app, and its features have been ably mapped onto nVidia's new remote control. The time-shifting features worked flawlessly in our tests, and A/V sync has improved – a problem that plagued first-generation Personal Cinema products. Probably the coolest feature in WinDVR is channel surfing, which puts up thumbnails from four stations at a time to show you what's currently playing. It's kind of a poor man's Picture-in-Picture, but is a clever use of the PC's ability to grab still screenshots of the incoming video and then show you what's playing. The other noteworthy thing about this feature is that it's something Personal Cinema has, and the All-in-Wonder lacks.

Product: eVGA Personal Cinema Web Site: nVidia Pro: Good mix of software, both homegrown and bundled, including a full version of a great game. Can drive two PC displays Con: 3D GPU needs more cojones; rough edges in the EPG need to be smoothed out. DVD player lacks DTS support. No full-screen UI Summary:       Great new DVD player and remote control, but 3D GPU needs more horsepower Price: $199, check prices Score: Video Capture/Editing: Personal Cinema uses a combination of Ulead's VideoStudio 6.0 SE and MovieFactory 2.0 SE. The interfaces on these apps are purposely sparse to make the video process fairly painless for newbies. MovieFactory is also a pretty slick app, and its menu editor allows you to create custom menus with your own background images, then choose from a variety of chapter layouts.

Remote: nVidia's new RF-based remote resembles the ATI remote, and has all of same features, and a few extras. The key mappings are somewhat different – for instance, we liked having the application close/cancel button just south of the mouse-cursor control pad, rather than where ATI places the button.

The control pad on the nVidia remote actually feels a bit mushier than ATI's, but gives you a bit more granularity to how fast you move the mouse cursor. A minor difference certainly. The nVidia remote lacks the user-programmable buttons found on the ATI version, but instead maps those keys for some useful functions, both in TV and DVD playback apps. You can tweak what apps get launched by the five green buttons near the top of the remote, something you cannot do with ATI's remote.

Miscellany: Other highlights include both DVI-I and VGA outputs, meaning you can drive two PC displays, using one for media playback and the other for your Windows desktop. There's also composite and S-video outputs, although you can only drive two displays at a time.

We also really liked the eVGA's line-level audio output that uses an internal connector to hook up to the sound card, rather than looping an external wire into the sound card's line-in jack.

However, both internal and external loopback connecters seem dated. These TV tuner devices should be able to send digital audio to the sound card via some form of digital audio extraction (DAE) – much like what CD and DVD-ROM drives have been doing for ages.

Speaking of audio, one thing missing from Personal Cinema is a S/PDIF output for Dolby Digital or DTS audio streams. ATI has had S/PDIF output for quite some time, and continues to have it. Admittedly, almost every sound card today includes S/PDIF output, but it's a handy feature for entry-level media.

nVidia's new and improved version of Personal Cinema is just that: new and improved. The remote is a definite upgrade from the first-generation remote, the breakout box has a sleeker look, and the NVDVD player is every bit as compelling (and then some) as ATI's own DVD player.

So far, neither product has an especially strong full-screen 10-foot UI to facilitate using these products in your living room on your TV. But there are alternative products such as MyHTPC, ScreenShifter and the upcoming SnapStream 3.0 which you can use to address this shortcoming. And don't forget our own PC Magazine PCMC utility which helps you view media files from a distance as well.

ATI's Multimedia Center suite of apps still feels more cohesive, although the interface is a bit dated. If we see higher end GPUs in nVidia's Personal Cinema product, ATI will have a real challenger, but for now the playing field is level at only one price point.

This category of products is going to be one of the key bridges to getting more PCs into living rooms, and the key to winning in the living room is simplicity. These products must be easy enough to use so that every family member can operate them, not just the house 'sysadmin.'

Both companies are going to need to develop full-screen TV-friendly UIs or partner up with a software maker to build one for them. There still needs to be better integration of the TV and EPG applications, and to date ATI does hold a bit of a lead here. But both companies need to work harder to make the interface simpler, cleaner and better integrated.

What to Buy: If you're looking to purchase one of these products, and 3D performance isn't much of an issue, either product will do. Decide based upon any of the subtle differences we've highlighted, including nVidia's dual-head feature, or ATI's support for pixel shaders. But either product will suit a mid-level need well.

That said, ATI still holds several key advantages, the first and most obvious being better 3D performance, both here and across its All-in-Wonder product line. We like ATI's EPG app better, and liked its bundled video capture/editing app better. So between the combination of the bundled software, solid hardware, and better 3D performance, we give the nod to ATI for this round, though as previously stated, nVidia is learning fast. If you need faster graphics performance, you only have one choice today – the All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro. And ATI also sells cheaper ginsu products too, some around $100.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.

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