Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2172



Our labs are full of new products that are currently being tested and not all of them fall into the motherboard, memory, or video card categories. In fact, we are excited at this time as we have several upcoming reviews that will delve into new or recent product introductions featuring storage technologies, optical drives, home networking, input devices, cooling, and more.

With the official release of Vista now behind us our focus has been on developing new test methodologies and benchmarks that will accurately predict the performance of components under the new operating system. While performance is important, rest assured we will be taking a hard look at the compatibility and functionality of these products in both XP and Vista.

Besides Vista, the arrival of Quad Core processors and the continuing proliferation of RAID on the desktop has also affected our testing methodologies for motherboards designed for the workstation or enthusiast markets. These changes along with verification of Vista (Premium, Basic, etc.) support as listed by the manufacturer will reshape our motherboard review process and presentation shortly.




We have seen a heightened awareness or interest of the average personal computer user in using their PC for media centric applications. In essence, with most versions of Vista including native Windows Media Center capabilities that have been greatly improved over MCE 2005, suppliers are hoping for the PC to finally become a mainstream digital content appliance in the living room. While we think this is still a ways off or might morph into something different, the mere fact that you will no longer need to purchase a separate operating system for Media Center functionality should help move the PC platform in this direction.

In the meantime, most of the multimedia product suppliers have started introducing new products or are providing functionality updates for current products to work properly under Vista. One of our favorite suppliers of value based multimedia products for the PC is Compro Technology. We are currently testing their unique and impressive VideoMate V600 TV Box but have updates on previous products that are now Vista Certified. Let's take a quick look at them again.



Compro

Compro Technology has been in business since 1988 and has been providing interesting PC based graphics and multimedia products based on the latest technologies in both the OEM and Retail markets. Their retail products are marketed under the VideoMate name and can be found at leading e-tailors.


The VideoMate S350 is a digital satellite TV tuner card based upon DVB-S standards. The card utilizes the Phillips 9-bit ADC chip that provides full SDTV and up to 1080i HDTV digital TV watching, DiSEqC 1.2, Transport Stream, and MPEG-2 digital TV recording when utilizing free-to-air DVB-S TV signals. Compro has included their Picture Purifying Technology that improves both SDTV and HDTV reception on your PC. The S350 features Compro's Power Up Technology that can automatically boot up your system from the Windows Shut Down (ACPI S5), Stand by (ACPI S3), or Hibernation (ACPI S4) modes, record your favorite shows, and will then automatically shutdown your system when recording is completed.

The S350 comes with a 37-key remote control unit and is bundled with ComproDTV 2, ComproDVD 2, and Ulead PhotoExplorer 8.5 SE software. The S350 will support 3rd party satellite TV PVR software as well. The ComproDTV 2 software supports timeshifting, channel surfing, still frame capture, digital EPG, subtitle and Teletext, advanced picture in/out picture to watch live TV or playback video files at the same time, and support for up to four digital channel windows in PIP mode. The VideoMate S350 is also a video capture card that can capture analog video (NTSC/PAL) from S-Video or Composite sources and can record in MPEG-1/2/4 formats.

The latest release of the ComproDTV 2 software along with the updated driver means this card is now Vista 32-bit certified. The clarity of both SDTV and HDTV signals has been very good to excellent in our limited testing under Vista Ultimate 32-bit. However, while the technology works very well, you must have the required digital dish and LNB for capturing DVB-S signals. This limits the potential market for the card, but for those who have the right equipment and can receive DVB-S signals we can recommend the card for purchase.



The VideoMate H900 TV Tuner and capture card features a hardware MPEG-1/2 encoder, universal silicon TV tuner, NTSC 3D Y/C separation, TV Stereo/SAP selection, FM radio listening, and MP3/WMA/WAV recording all in a low-profile card design.

This unit also features Compro's Power Up Technology that can automatically boot up your system from the Windows Shut Down (ACPI S5), Stand by (ACPI S3), or Hibernation (ACPI S4) modes, record your favorite shows, and will then automatically shutdown your system when recording is completed. The included software package contains the ComproPVR 2 program, ComproDVD 2 playback utility, ComproFM 2, Ulead PhotoExplorer 8.5 SE, Ulead VideoStudio 9 SE, and Ulead DVD MovieFactory 4 SE. The unit also features a IR remote with TV, recording, playback, and FM tuner functions.

The VideoMate H900 utilizes the Conexant CX23418 video processing chipset that features a 10-bit analog Hardware MPEG-2 decoder with 3D adaptive comb filter. Audio is provided by a 16-bit ADC that allows sample rates of 32KHz / 44.1KHz / 48KHz. The board also contains 32MB of DDR memory for on-board buffering and caching of video material. The card allows for hardware compression of full D-1 TV shows or in VCD/SVCD/DVD formats. The card is also capable of hardware based time shifting that allows instant pause and replay of live TV. The card is also capable of MPEG-4 encoding via the included software package. Further technical details can be found on the Compro website.

We found the H900 offered very good performance during testing, although the picture quality was not as crisp as our AMD/ATI TV Wonder 550 or Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 cards. However, the differences in picture quality were not recognizable at all on screens less than 37". The included ComproPVR 2 software offered numerous options such as PIP/POP features that allowed us to watch live TV and recorded video files at the same time. We have not experienced any issues in Vista Ultimate 32-bit at this time and the card is now Vista Certified. Although the demand for analog TV tuners will be dwindling over the next couple of years, if you are in the market for a TV tuner card then we highly suggest you consider the Compro H900.

Final Remarks

We are still completing testing of these two cards along with the V600 unit under Vista, and we will provide a final image analysis update in the near future. In the meantime, we will provide performance updates shortly on our abit AB9 QuadGT and DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R motherboards armed with the latest BIOS releases that solve compatibility issues and improve performance.

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