BIOS: Technology Means Business

nVidia’s latest product launch is a slight departure for the company.

The DualTV tuner is one of the first PCI-based TV tuners for Windows-based computers to offer two TV tuners on a single card with comprehensive personal video recording functionality, unique MediaSqueeze disk space saving technology, and support for Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) operating system.

With its two-tuner technology, the DualTV tuner transforms an MCE-equipped PC into a bona fide home entertainment system. With a touch of a mouse button you can schedule recordings of your favourite TV shows and watch them when you want, record two TV shows simultaneously, or watch one channel while recording another, as well as watch pause, and rewind live or recorded TV shows.

With the emergence of portable media players and ubiquitous broadband availability, DualTV lets you watch your programs from almost anywhere - in the home, on the go, or over the Internet. Programs recorded with the device can be transferred to personal media players and portable game players that playback video, and many other portable media players.

Live or recorded shows can be streamed throughout the home to game consoles or Media Center Extenders. And with Orb Networks software you can watch live or recorded TV shows from anywhere in the world over the Internet for personal use.

The DualTV tuner offers a unique MediaSqueeze technology that allows you to store more of your favourite TV programs on your hard disk, DVD, or portable media player. You can record live TV shows at a lower bit-rate than normal or ‘transrate’ previously-recorded TV programs into a lower bit-rate to preserve disk space, without significant loss in picture quality.

In internal testing using a Tektronix PQA300 MPEG image quality measurement system, nVidia found its picture quality rating at medium bit-rates scored consistently better than competitive products recorded at a higher bit-rate.

nVidia has applied its PureVideo technology to the DualTV tuner enabling the highest possible picture quality on a PC to date. In addition to PureVideo, the DualTV tuner features a 3D comb filter to create high-quality colour separations and enhance image detail, 3D noise reduction hardware to clean up the signal, and an in-line TV amplifier to boost weak signals. There’s even a multi-stream hardware encoder to record crystal clear TV shows with low CPU utilisation.

In addition to these picture-quality enhancing features, the DualTV tuner carries the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) certification, signifying that it meets ISF standards for home theatre-quality television tuning and recording. Since 1994, ISF has provided comprehensive testing and certification of performance quality, and a publicly recognized logo program for high-end consumer electronics products that consumers identify with superior quality.

The DualTV tuner is available immediately for $169 (£95).

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