Our initial installation of the PowerColor Theater 550 Pro had to be revamped and our review re-edited, as we had some problems installing the card with this system:
With the above configuration the PowerCinema Software failed to work properly, so I decided to stuff the 550 Pro into our SLI Rig and load up the OS and install PowerCinema. Much to our happiness the Theater 550 Pro and the PowerCinema software worked perfectly. We will now demonstrate the card using this Configuration:
We tested this configuration in a open air environment for fast and easy installation. We are using HighSpeed PC's Tech Station for the testing of the PowerColor Theater 550 Pro.
Here is the relative size and look of the Theater 550 Pro installed in our test rig. The card is a sub compact design being drawfed by the VGA adapters we are using. While this card is small is sure does get hot while in use. In fact I want to take some readings and I will point that out shortly.
PowerColor's Theater 550 Pro is a slim sleek design, being slightly thicker than an actual PCI slot. The pictures above show just how thin this card really is. Installation was just as easy as any other peripheral installation, plug the card in and fire up the system. Easy stuff!
The expansion bracket contains the A/V dongle port, FM Antenna port, Cable-TV / Antenna port. Both the FM Antenna and Cable-TV ports are common Coaxial connections. The bracket is labeled to ensure you make proper connections. The A/V dongle will allow you to play your favorite console from your computer monitor as well by using the included S-video, RCA Audio I/O jacks to connect to any gaming console.
Using CyberLink PowerCinema, we get outstanding control of the Theater 550 Pro. Including features like DVD Player - Dual Subtitle display, Advanced Menu Support, Still Capture, and Parental Controls. Listen to full FM Stereo quality Radio using PowerCinema.
Once I installed the drivers and setup PowerCinema on our SLI system, the setup was fast and easy. You will have to complete the first-time setup in order to take full advantage of PowerCinema. Scanning channels and configuration is fast and painless.
You will have to Auto-Scan for TV signal, so PowerCinema can preset your available channels and set them into memory. The entire process took about 3 minutes to scan and find our 110 cable channels.
Same process for the FM radio tuner. PowerCinema will find and store any signal that is strong enough to provide lock. Once autoscan is complete, you will have access to any FM channel with the very easy to use interface that PowerCinema gives you.
American Chopper anyone? Here you can see PowerCinema with the control interface which will allow you to watch, record and review recorded TV from the Theater 550 Pro. You can control scheduled recordings and play back using the innovative schedule features. You will also be able to control volumn, snap shots and recordings from this interface.
Change aspect ratios, adjust size and TV controls with PowerCinema. This is a shot of the our TV in a window mode, which is real nice as you do not have to contend with just a full screen PowerCinema Control panel. The color and clarity is amazing. Our desktop resolution was set at 1280 x 1024.
PowerCinema allows you to click and drag your window size. This is the smallest size and the biggest size being full screen (duh). The image is defaulted to "Stay-on-top", so you can minimize the TV screen and work in a windows environment while casually watching TV or listening to FM radio using your applications. PowerCinema makes it easy!
Temperatures:
After using the Theater 550 Pro for over a week now I took some temperature samples after noticing the significant heat radiation emanating from the card while putting my hand in the vicinity of it. I got out my CM - Aerogate II and took some samples:
I am going to get readings from both the DDR ram and the 550 Pro core. I am using thermal tape and 2 thermal sensing resisters and sending this to the Cooler Master Aerogate II. With the Aerogate II we have the possibility to read out the temperature via the LCD display while we are playing with the 550 Pro.
Our findings suggest this card runs hot with the ram module 59.0°C and the VPU at 59.5°C which is 138.2°F - 139.1°F respectively. While this is not finger blistering, this is still hotter than than our VGA card and way hotter than our CPU which is running at 36.0°C while running this sample.
Final Thoughts:
After having some issues with out first test bed and being contacted by ATI, we decided to re-test this configuration on our SLI platform and provide analysis on this system as our other configuration is aging and reaching end of life. While obsolete, even though its a 865PE Intel base 3.0GHz system, we felt in the end and considering the time frame I had to do the review, that our test results are justified using this test bed. The new test results reflect the review using CyberLink PowerCinema and we had excellent results under this configuration and this is what we wanted to achieve.
In the retail market this card's MSRP is roughly $99.99. While this is double of that of any generic TV Tuner card. I can vouche that the quality cannot touch the Theater 550 Pro. The PowerColor card is exceptional and very versatile, I highly recommend this product to anyone wanting to turn your PC into a home entertainment system.
Only other thing we noticed that wasn't that big of a deal, was using AOL Instant messenger with this product caused us to lose audio when I loaded and signed on our AIM account. This however did not effect our nForce 4 platform using a DFI nf4 SLI-DR motherboard. So leads me to believe that only certain configurations will conflict with the audio and or the TV. We can't blame the 550 Pro for this issue as it was legacy hardware confliction when we tried to test this on our MSI 865PE Neo2-LS system, but we wanted to mention this anyway, because you as a potential buyer has a right to know.
On an ending note, this product kicks some serious butt! I love the fact the TV is clear and the audio is syncronized in real time giving us one of the best TV Tuner experience to date. Again I recommend this product to anyone, from gamers to home user's to corporate environments and presentations. Everyone can get a little something out of this device and with the one of the most powerful chips on the market, you can't go wrong.
Pros:
PNY 8800GT PCIe 512MB - Rev 04
