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CEBIT 2005: TV tuners take over CEBIT

by Ryszard Sommefeldt on 15 March 2005, 00:00

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TV tuners take over CeBit

The advent of Windows MCE has opened up the floodgates for analogue and digital tuners to put in an MCE system, for tuning TV. After reviewing ATI's ALL-IN-WONDER X800 XT recently, I thought, for my own reference as much as anything, I should see what the alternatives currently are for TV tuning on the PC, especially in terms of MCE-certified tuners. I got more than I expected, more than one dual-tuner-on-a-single-card product popping up and some interesting comments from various tuner vendors about MCE and video in general, that I'll save for a future article.

I schmoozed for samples, so look out for a roundup of some of the cooler tuners I can get my hands on, as soon as I can. Here's three of the more interesting ones I found, on PCI and PCI Express. Did you know you can get TV tuners that aren't TV tuners? Or that some vendors have ATI Theater 550 PRO-based cards with no tuner can? They're all at CeBit, if you look hard enough. I'm going to cop out and explain it all in detail seperately and do my usual hit and run with some photographs, for you to dribble over.

InnoDV
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MCE250
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nGene
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The Micronas nGene looks particularly interesting, with the MCE 250 a close second (guess who makes it....).