PowerColor Theater 550 Pro PCI Express
Introduction
The old crowd of PCI TV Tuners may need to step aside soon, as their PCIe cousins head into the market. Sure, there are still plenty of people without motherboards equipped with PCI Express expansion slots, but the old PCI bus is eventually on it's way out.
Today we're going to take a look at PowerColor's PCI Express based Theatre 550 Pro TV Tuner. Other than the way the card interfaces with a system, there's little difference between the newer PCIe based tuners over PCI, so we'll be focusing on the PowerColor card's performance, ease of installation, setup, and bundled software. Speaking of software, some of you may recall our relative displeasure with CyberLink's PowerCinema 3 software in our review of MSI's ATI Theater 550 Pro, so our experience with PowerColor's choice of PowerCinema 4, will weigh heavily on this evaluation. First thing's first though; let's look at the specifications before moving on to the more pressing issues.
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| Package: PowerColor 550 Pro PCIe Card Remote Control USB Receiver Manuals and Books: Quick Installation GuideSoftware Packaged: Theater 550 Pro DriversPowerCinema 4.0 PowerDirector MediaShow MusicMatch PowerBackup(Trial) PowerDVD PowerProducer Power2Go PowerDVD Copy(Trial) System Requirements: Windows XPPentium 3/4 or Similar CPU Television Source(Antenna, Analog/Digital Cable, Satellite) Available PCIe Slot Notable Features: FM Radio Reception 16MB DDR memory and 3D Comb Filter Real-time MPEG2 hardware compression Record from any video source (TV, VCR, DVD, Camcorder, etc.) Skip Commercials on Playback Auto and Full Channel scan Scheduled Recording |
Pricing and Availability:
Around $90 Warranty: 1 Year Limited WarrantyATI Theater 550 Pro Technology: ATI Theater 550 Pro Features:
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