To begin, media center PCs are attracting more attention than ever before. They’re more aesthetically pleasing, simultaneously powerful and quiet, and the much-needed software responsible for connecting users to hardware is finally maturing thanks to concerted cooperation between hardware manufacturers, third-party developers, and, of course, Microsoft itself.

The recent release of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 banks heavily on the use of tuner cards. With one card installed, you can watch live TV, pause the incoming stream, or record it. Armed with two tuners, it’s possible to watch one show and record another. And if that weren’t enough, you can even use two analog tuners and one digital for the ultimate in flexibility.

Media center PCs are also picking up momentum amongst the do-it-yourself crowd thanks to graphics cards such as ATI’s All-in-Wonder and application suites like SnapStream’s Beyond TV 3. The configuration process, which, quite frankly, was once a major hassle, is now relatively painless. With the prices on large-screen displays falling and even larger cuts expected in 2005 according to several industry sources, you’re going to see heightened interest in home theater equipment, TV tuners included.

Today’s TV tuner landscape is full of options, from incredibly low-cost solutions to elaborate PCI cards with dual encoders onboard. Not all multimedia products are created equally, though. Microsoft has its own Logo Partner List populated by components that it deems compatible with Windows XP MCE 2005. The complete list can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/partners/dfw/partnerlisting.mspx, but we’ll focus on the most widely available products here.

Hauppauge:
Industry Veteran

For a period of two or three years, it didn’t appear that Hauppauge was making much forward progress. Sure, it had a compelling product lineup. However, intensifying pressure from ATI and NVIDIA silenced the company for quite a while. Ken Plotkin, president of Hauppauge, isn’t worried though. “We’ve been manufacturing tuner cards for Windows XP Media Center Edition since 2002,” he says. “Driver development is perhaps the most difficult aspect of MCE compliance, and we have plenty of experience in that field.”

Indeed, Hauppauge already offers five cards that comply with Microsoft’s MCE logo program. The least expensive, its WinTV-PVR-150MCE, is a basic TV tuner with MPEG-2 encoding capabilities to accelerate MCE’s PVR (personal video recorder) function. It also includes an FM radio tuner.

Because most TV cards aren’t very large, it’s easier to be more flexible with their designs. The WinTV-PVR-150MCE employs the standard PCI interface and occupies a full-sized slot. In contrast, the WinTV-PVR-150MCE l.p. fits in a half-sized, low-profile slot, yet includes all of the same features. It’s ideal for building a media center system in a space-constrained chassis.

The WinTV-PVR-250MCE is very similar to the 150 line, only it uses two separate circuits for audio and video conversion. There’s not a significant difference in capabilities. The 250MCE is just more expensive for Hauppauge to manufacture. It comes with FM tuning, audio/video encoding, and stereo decoding, plus a number of inputs for connecting to a set-top box.

Hauppauge’s most exciting card is the WinTV-PVR-MCE500, which features two analog tuners on a single PCI board and instantly makes it possible to watch one channel while another is recording in MCE 2005. It’s a little pricey at $200, but it is the most graceful way to experience MCE’s full potential.

In addition to a comprehensive lineup of PCI cards, Hauppauge also manufactures the only external tuner certified to work under Windows XP MCE 2005. The WinTV-PVR-USB2 supports all of the same time-shifting, auxiliary input, and FM tuning features offered by the PCI products, except that it’s more mobile. Of course, you’ll need USB 2.0 connectivity in order to enjoy the device’s full quality potential.

The big picture behind all of these new products designed especially for Windows XP MCE 2005, according to Hauppauge’s Plotkin, is the enabling of on-demand entertainment. So, for example, a media center PC, equipped with a pair of Hauppauge tuners is able to display live television and record an entirely different channel. From there, content can be recorded onto blank DVDs for archival purposes (sure beats buying the boxed set, doesn’t it?) or streamed to networked devices. Configuring network PCs to access shared media resources is a fairly elementary process, but it’s also possible to power a television and stereo receiver in another room using a wireless Media Center Extender, such as Linksys’ WMCE54AG. Further, the latest round of hard drive-based portable media centers makes it possible to watch those shows on the road.

Even before the next-generation of wireless technologies emerge, existing hardware and software packages are already making it possible to centralize media acquisition and distribute it legally throughout the household and beyond. TV tuners sit at the heart of all that action, so it will undoubtedly pay to know your media center hardware.

ATI:
An Upcoming Force

Despite its vast expertise in video acceleration and longstanding history with TV tuner cards, ATI currently plays a relatively small role in today’s MCE market. In fact, its only product on Microsoft’s MCE 2005 Logo Partner List (as of November 29th, 2004) is the HDTV Wonder, an OTA (over the air) broadcast HD receiver. Granted, that’s not all bad news for ATI, since the HDTV Wonder is currently the only HD card certified for use with Microsoft’s shiny new operating system.

The principal caveat is that ATI’s HDTV Wonder will only receive HD signals through an antenna. And while that’s fine if you only want the free high-def content available over the air, it strands those who pay for premium HD cable or satellite. According to John Swinimer, public relations manager at ATI, there are a few obstacles inhibiting the production of more capable HD tuner cards.

Digital rights management is, not surprisingly, the most prevalent. Hollywood doesn’t want broadcasters to air shows that will be bootlegged and distributed through file sharing programs. If studios won’t sell shows to networks that don’t protect their digital property, the penetration of HD technology may very well stop dead in its tracks. After all, why would anyone buy an HDTV if there wasn’t content available for it? And why would a studio sell programming that will be reproduced bit-for-bit and accessed by anyone with a broadband Internet connection?

That’s why the FCC is mandating use of a broadcast flag by July of 2005, which will instruct devices to restrict the recording of flagged content. All equipment manufactured after July 1st must enforce the flag and resist any end-user attempt to disable it. You’ll be able to time-shift your shows (else the FCC would deal with an uproar of epic proportions), but the days of saving HD-quality content to your hard drive and archiving it on a DVD will officially be over.

The good news is that DTV hardware manufactured before the broadcast flag mandate takes effect isn’t required to abide by the new regulation and will continue functioning in order to maintain backwards compatibility. Thus, the HDTV Wonder may become an increasingly hot commodity, despite its OTA HD limitation (bear in mind that it still receives analog signals too). Swinimer assures us that ATI is working on hardware that will support QAM (the signal modulation scheme used to send HD content over cable), but first needs to make sure both end-users and technology partners wind up satisfied with the result. Consequentially, we expect that ATI will hold off on another HD card until the FCC mandate takes effect.

But that doesn’t mean the company is spinning its wheels either. In fact, by the time you read this, ATI will have already announced the TV Wonder Elite, an analog tuner that features its Theater 550 video processor.

Armed with MPEG-2 encoding, a 3D comb filter, 12-bit video decoding, and a standardized audio decoder, ATI claims to be targeting the quality levels of $2,000 televisions with its chip and integrating the necessary functionality to accelerate video capture as well. And although there haven’t been any announcements yet, Microsoft representatives already alluded to the add-in card’s alacrity in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

Best of all, the TV Wonder Elite is expected to be ATI’s most flexible tuner. Not only will it come in PCI and PCI Express x1 bus interfaces, but it will also work with ATI’s own Multimedia Center software, Cyberlink’s PowerCinema, and InterVideo’s WinDVR application suite.

The TV Wonder USB 2.0 is another of ATI’s tuner projects. Though not certified for use with MCE 2005, the mobile TV Wonder is unique in that it sends uncompressed video using USB 2.0’s 480 Mbps pathway. Compared to competing products, many of which have to contend with USB 1.1 transfer rates, the TV Wonder USB 2.0 offers significantly better visual quality and responsiveness while changing channels thanks to ATI’s Theater 200 processor.

You’ll find the same video decoder on ATI’s latest All-inWonder cards as well. Again, Microsoft doesn’t list any of the All-in-Wonder products on the MCE 2005 compatibility list, but nevertheless they’re still tightly integrated multimedia cards featuring polishing software that comes close to that same media center experience.

NVIDIA:
Competing Quietly

NVIDIA’s track record on the multimedia front isn’t as rosy as ATI’s. However, the Personal Cinema family, equivalent to ATI’s All-in-Wonder, improves substantially every time that NVIDIA revises it. Most recently, the Personal Cinema re-emerged with an updated software suite the blows the doors off any of its previous offerings.

That same software package represents one of only two approved MCE 2005 DVD decoders, accentuating NVIDIA’s work in the MCE space. Moreover, there are currently five GeForce graphics products sanctioned for use in the operating system, including the latest GeForce 6600 and 6800 powerhouses. A pair of TV tuner cards round out NVIDIA’s package of media-centric hardware.

The cards aren’t particularly flashy. The NVTV employs a silicon tuner and LSI Logic’s MPEG-2 encoder backed by 16MB of memory. There’s a dual-tuner version available called the NVTV 200, which operates similarly to Hauppauge’s WinTV-PVR-MCE500. Both variants provide for video input, FM tuning, and audio output.

IN RETROSPECT

Though they might not have been hot products a couple of years ago, TV tuner cards play an integral role in the media center PC. With Microsoft relaxing its licensing requirements for Windows XP MCE 2005, you can expect more customers to express an interest in the formerly inaccessible operating system, too. Each machine will need one–maybe two–analog TV tuners and, in many cases, an HD device as well. When the time comes to explain that your customers will need hardware from Microsoft’s partner logo list, which components will you recommend and why? If you aren’t sure, perhaps it’s time to build a media center PC system for yourself. It just might become the most entertaining “business expense” that you purchase in 2005.