HDTV PC Tuner Cards

AccessDTV PCI Tuner Card  Digital Stream HiDTV PCI Tuner Card  Hauppauge WinTV-HD PCI Tuner Card  MIT's MyHD MDP-100 PCI Tuner Card   Telemann's HiPix DTV-200 PCI Tuner Card

 

How do you get into the HDTV market without shelling out thousands of dollars? If you have a PC, and live in an area with HDTV transmitters, you can make a small ($300-$400) investment and start enjoying High-Definition ‘Digital TV’. There are at least five distinct PC based HDTV Tuner Card solutions on the market today.

Please do not confuse HDTV with digital cable. Digital cable has absoluty nothing to do with HDTV unless your cable provider offers HDTV channels (example: HBO-HD, SHO-HD, Discovery HD Theater, ABC-HD, CBS-HD, NBC-HD or PBS-HD) in its digital cable lineup. In effect digital cable is nothing more than taking the analog NTSC broadcast signals and digitally encoding them at the cable headend, multiplexing them with other digitally encoded signals, and then demuliplexing and decoding them at the cable box in your home. The cable box will output a regular NTSC analog signal to the TV set. The main advantage of "Digital Cable" is a reduction in interference ("Ghostly" multipath pictures) and an increase in consistancy across station signal strenghs. The main reason the cable providers offer digital cable is so that they can compress the analog TV signals and offer more channels, especially PPV channels, in the same amount of bandwidth. It has very little to do with better picture quality. It is simply a way for the cable providers to generate more revenue.

In the past there have been two major TV Tuner Card vendors in the PC market. ATI Inc. and Hauppauge Inc. have been making PC based SDTV tuner cards for quite some time. ATI Inc. has also been providing their infamous All-In-Wonder graphic solutions that tightly integrate a TV Tuner with video capture, editing and output capabilities. Their latest AIW solution, the AIW Radeon 9700 Pro, leads the market in 3D graphics and hardware assisted (iDCT) DVD playback. ATI integrates a NTSC based SDTV tuner and bundles in real-time MPEG-1/2 video capture via software CODEC. There have been other companies that have attempted SDTV Tuner/Video Capture solutions such as Asus, AverMedia, Creative Labs, D-Link, Matrox, MSI and Pinnacle however ATI and Hauppauge remain the leaders in this market.

Telemann Systems Inc.’s (HiPix DTV-200) was one of the first products on the market to provide HDTV capabilities on a PC. You can watch HDTV broadcasts on a PC monitor or an HDTV monitor. You can also record any HDTV broadcast, in native resolution, onto the hard drive and watch it at your convenience. The card provides Dolby Digital 5.1 audio and will take any video input resolution and transcode it to 720p or 1080i. It is supposed to have the ability to transcode all formats to any resolution however I have not been able to verify that claim. The card comes equipped with an EPG, from TitanTV, and an IR remote control. The HiPix DTV-200 design is based on the TeraLogic Janus Decoder and the Oren HDTV Receiver/Demodulator. The other cards are based on the TeraLogic Janus Decoder and the Nextwave Nxt2000 HDTV Receiver/Demodulator.

Hauppauge Inc.’s (WinTV-HD) tuner card is one of them however it is limited in features, compared to the other solutions available on the market. There are known issues with PVR functionality and the user interface leaves a lot to be desired. MPEG-2 data streams are recorded on the hard drive and they are not-encrypted however when you play back a file, there are no controls to pause, fast-forward, or rewind the video. For surround sound, you must change a jumper on the card itself to switch the audio output from analog to digital.

iTech Group Inc.’s (AccessDTV) is one of the most expensive solution out of all the cards reviewed on this page however AccessDTV software can 'soft decode' not just one but multiple high definition streams simultaneously. The card contains PVR features however you cannot record analog (NTSC) shows onto the hard drive. The resulting file is encrypted and can only be played back with the same card, can you say MPAA, however the file is played back with a well implemented PBC interface. The company does offer an EPG service, for $10/mo, however the card does not come with an IR remote control.

Digital Stream’s (HiDTV Pro) HDTV tuner card is the latest entry into the HDTV PC tuner card market. It comes with PVR funtionality that can capture HDTV and SDTV broadcasts and comes with a simple file editing utility. The HiDTV Pro solution provides TitanTV based EPG support and a fully funtional IR remote control.

There are two companies distributing Macro Imaging Technologies Inc.’s (MyHD MDP-100) PC based HDTV tuner cards: Digital Connection and Cinefx. The Card incorporates the EPG, from TitanTV, to navigate the SDTV and HDTV listings and allows users to 'point, click and record’ digital & analog TV broadcasts and external A/V inputs. The card also Supports D-VHS connectivity, through the IEEE 1394 interface, with a Windows XP based PC.

Digital Connection offers 2 of the five potential HDTV Tuner Cards for the PC the AccessDTV ($399) and the MyHD MDP-100 ($299). The HiPix DTV-200 card has been discontinued from their site however it is available at HTmarket.com and CellarCinemas.com for $399. PC-DTV Technologies is the sole distributor for HiDTV Pro Premium ($349) HDTV tuner card for the US market. You can find the WinTV-HD ($299) tuner card at eCost.

After reading through the various AVSforums supporting the products I would recommend either the HiDTV Pro or the MyHD MDP-100 HDTV tuner cards as the most complete HDTV/PVR solutions available for the PC today.

The HDTV PC tuner cards, with PVR functionality, programs can be scheduled to record only if they can be tuned by the onboard ATSC or NTSC tuners. Content entering via the S-Video or Composite video inputs cannot be SCHEDULED to record.

ATI does not currently OEM a HDTV tuner card solution however they do provide HDTV Receiver/Demodulator DSP solutions for other set-top vendors. ATI has acquired Nextwave technology and recently released the latest versions of the Nxt200x DSP family and I expect there will be newer models from most of these manufacturers. Hopefully there will be other manufacturers getting into the PC based HDTV Tuner Card market.

Note: DVICO will be releasing the FusionHDTV ($199) tuner card sometime in February of 2003. It is one of a new brand of cost reduced cards utilizing a full software solution with minimal hardware support from the Conexant Bt878 chip and the latest VSB tuner. It will use a software based tuner driver, AC3 audio decoder and dual HDTV stream decoders, to reduce cost. The total solution includes PVR functionality and a TitanTV EPG. The USB based IR remote control is optional.The card also Supports D-VHS connectivity, through the IEEE 1394 interface, with a Windows XP based PC.

These cost reduced HDTV tuner cards will probably have no support for analog inputs or outputs and will have strict system requirements for full funtionality. DxVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) mode will decode full resolution HDTV (1920x1080) at full framerates however minimum requirements include an ATI Radeon based video card. Using DxVA full resolution HDTV streams can be decoded at 30fps/sec using less than 50% of a P4 1.8GHz CPU. Full software mode decodes partial resolution HDTV (960x540) and requires a very fast CPU with DDR memory.