What’s in the box? The PowerColor Theater 550 Pro, a remote control with batteries, a FM antenna, a break out box that accepts S-Video and RCA input. The remote is Cyberlink branded unit instead of the RemoteWonder that ATI supplies with the All-In-Wonder series.
While others have reported screwy remote control operations, ours ran like a charm and offered excellent range. I was able to set the receiver on my desktop and managed to control all the functions from 20 feet away in line of site operation. This remote will not work through walls so even if you are only 8 feet away you will only get full functionality using the "line-of-site" operational method. This is do to IR transmissions as the signal has to make direct contact with the receiver in order to allow communication between the transmitter and receiver.
PowerColor includes a media dongle allowing the use to install and watch video from your Theater 550 Pro on your TV set. This also allows your digital devices such as video recorders and digital cameras to send its video and pictures to TV our the tuner using the flexible software included with the Theater 550 Pro.
This is the FM antenna which will allow FM reception for crystal clear reception. You must use this in order to receive a FM signal. The FM radio will not work with out it.
The software delivered with the Theater 550 Pro consists of Cyberlink’s Power bundle. Included are versions of PowerCinema, PowerDVD, Power Producer DVD, Power2Go, PowerDirector SE+ and MediaShow SE.
PowerCinema offers complete multi-channel (4/6/7/8) and S/PDIF sound device support, including (but not limited to) devices from Analog Devices, Aureal, Creative, Cirrus/Crystal, CMedia, ESS, Fortemedia, KCTech, Philips/VLSI, Realtek, Sigmatel, SiS, TI, Yamaha, VIA, and any other sound device that supports the Microsoft WAVEFORMATEXTENSIBLE interface.
PowerCinema is compatible with all Centrino, Socket 478, Socket 423, Socket 370, Slot 1, Socket A and Slot A chipsets from Intel, VIA, SiS, ALi, NVIDIA, and AMD. PowerCinema is also compatible with Transmeta Crusoe systems. However in our test bed we could not get the PowerCinema software to function properly on our Intel platform so I revamped the review and tested on our SLI system and everything went off without a hitch. The Power Cinema worked perfectly in our AMD rig.
The features of the Theater 550 Pro are extended. Just to give an overview, a TV tuner, a FM tuner, video capture, MPEG2 encoding, 3D comb filter and noise reduction. All these guarantee that the quality of the images are superior to previous technology. The Theater 550 Pro brings stunning visual details through the advanced video processing features, like 3D comb filter and noise reduction.
The PowerColor Theater 550 Pro is fully supported on Microsoft’s Media Center Edition 2005. Media Center Edition 2005 is an operating system that enables you to enjoy the best in home entertainment, as well as complete support and operations for Windows XP Service Pack 2.
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