Digital Trends

NVIDIA DualTV MCE

June 19th, 2006 | by Alan Dang

Features and Design

The DualTV MCE from NVIDIA is an analog dual TV tuner that transforms a Windows XP machine into a PVR. With dual tuners built-in, you can record two different TV shows simultaneously, while watching a third, previously recorded show. Or, if you'd like to use the first tuner to pause and rewind live TV, you'll still be able to record another show in the background. With competing products such as the ATI TV Wonder Elite, you'd only be able to record one show at a time.  If you wanted to pause/rewind live TV with the TV Wonder Elite, you wouldn't be able to do anything else at the same time.

What really makes the DualTV MCE special is that it offers some of best image quality for a PC TV Tuner thanks to technologies such as 3D Noise Reduction, a 3D comb filter, an exceptional silicon-based tuner, a sophisticated ViXS XcodeII MPEG-2 Encoder, and the PureVideo Decoder.

The concept of GIGO "Garbage-In... Garbage-Out..." clearly applies to TV tuners. NVIDIA's excellent image quality begins with their "Weak Signal Amplification Technology." By pairing the high-end silicon tuners with a signal amplifier, the DualTV MCE is able to get better reception than other PC tuners. It is worth mentioning that NVIDIA's decision to use silicon tuners means that while you'll have better image quality, you'll also have to wait a little over two seconds to change from one channel to another.

Even though the TV signal has been captured as cleanly as possible, there will still be some flaws in the image such as snow or noise (think film grain). This is why NVIDIA applies 3D Noise Reduction to the image to clean up the signal even further. The trick is to remove noise while preserving the details in the image. Again, NVIDIA DualTV MCE has a best-in-class performance for noise-reduction.

From this point, the signal is processed with a 3D Motion-Adaptive Comb Filter. The full technical discussion of this feature would take several pages, but basically, a comb filter reconstructs the color data found in the broadcast signal. The better the comb filter, the better image definition, particularly at the borders between different colors. The 3D Motion-Adaptive method used in the DualTV MCE is one of the best on the market.

With this clean signal, the video must now be compressed to MPEG-2. This process converts the raw data into smaller and more manageable files that can be easily stored on your hard drive. MPEG-2 encoding translates the video into mathematical equations that approximate the original source. The algorithms used in this process can vary from one MPEG-2 decoder to another, and that has consequences on image quality. The ViXS XcodeII MPEG-2 encoder happens to be one of the best MPEG-2 encoders in its class.  One added benefit is that you can also choose a low-bitrate recording to get more minutes of recording time (think EP recording mode vs. SP recording) while still preserving good image quality.  NVIDIA calls this “MediaSqueeze” technology.

Now you have an MPEG-2 recording of the television show. This can be stored on your hard drive, backed-up to a DVD, or ... played back.  To play back the recording, the data must be processed by an MPEG-2 decoder. NVIDIA bundles their PureVideo Decoder with the DualTV MCE, long considered one of the best of the industry.

The DualTV MCE's image quality is certified by the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF), but in fact, NVIDIA exceeds the minimum spec set forth by this agency. Essentially, while you can find competitors with similar quality features to the NVIDIA DualTV MCE, you won't find a competitor which uses best-in-class technology at every step of the way.

In addition to best-in-class image quality, the DualTV MCE also has a complete feature set including a FM tuner, a wireless remote control, and the ability to record video from S-Video or composite video sources (such as a camcorder or video game console).

Image Courtesy of NVIDIA