A Closer Look:

PowerColor uses the ATI Theater 550 Pro VPU which integrates almost a half dozen functions packed into a single chip package, giving the ultimate multimedia experience in one the best PVR/DTV kits money can buy. Meeting the needs of today's multimedia entertainment systems, the Theater 550 Pro gives significant image quality over anything previously introduced to the PVR - HD/TV-Tuner markets.

The VPU is a next generation 12-bit video decoder that includes a state of the art 5-line 2D Comb Filter that delivers un-rivaled video quality giving rich, vibrant video by taking out un-wanted noise saturation and artifacts that would cause video corruption and distortion that are seen in yesterdays DTV.

Motion Adaptive 3D Comb filtering and integrated anti-aliasing filters add to the quality and convergence of video vibrancy. Support for BTSC, Dual FM, EIA-J and NICAM gives the 550 Pro world wide standard compatibility. In short this new chip is giving a video improvement that of HDTV set’s costing thousands of dollars. The chip is so versatile that it is said to migrate into the AIW series from ATI.

Our sample is the PCI interface and while we support both PCI and PCI-E devices we went with the most popular route for this review. At any rate, here is what the back of the card looks like.

The connectors are easy to access and connections are simple thanks to the label stamped into the expansion bracket. If you can read then you can install this card with no hitch.

The bracket and tuner cover is finished in gold plate with the TV-Tuner being completely covered in a RF container to eliminate RF interference with local components and other near-by devices that might be sensitive to RF.