Compro Intros Powerful VideoMate Vista E800F PCIe x1 TV/FM Tuner Card

[malware]

Compro Technology, an innovative leading manufacturer and developer of PC multimedia products, recently introduced the VideoMate Vista E800F, which is an advanced hybrid PCIe interface DVB-T and analog TV/FM tuner card with a powerful real-time hardware MPEG-2 encoder. With the VideoMate Vista E800F, you can enjoy viewing DVB-T digital TV or analog TV. The built-in hardware MPEG-2 encoder provides excellent video quality with minimum CPU usage. Aside from having excellent hardware design and features, VideoMate Vista E800F is also accompanied by Compro’s exclusive ComproDTV 4 software. It features universal analog TV or free-to-air 1080i HDTV quality digital TV watching/recording, channel surfing, timeshifting, still frames capture, Transport Stream recording and playback in digital TV, the custom channel order creating and exclusive S5 (shutdown)/ S4 (hibernation) /S3 (standby) mode power up scheduled recording. Compatible with Microsoft Windows Vista, VideoMate Vista E800F additionally includes a Microsoft certified Windows Media Center remote which gives users full control of Windows Media Center and the ComproDTV 4 software.




Specifications:

• Hybrid DVB-T and worldwide analog TV (NTSC/SECAM/PAL) reception with FM radio
• Built-in high-performance real-time hardware MPEG-2 encoder
• High-Speed PCI Express x 1 interface for improved performance
• Supports 480i/576i component video input
• Supports SDTV and 1080i HDTV (where available)
• Supports SAP(MTS/NICAM)/Stereo in analog TV
• Bundled with Windows Media Center remote to control Windows Media Center and ComproDTV 4
• All-new ComproDTV 4 software with Vista Gadget, DTV Add-In, and Windows Media Center schedule recording list integration
• ComproDTV 4 can simultaneously operate, viewing or recording, multiple Compro TV devices on the same machine, internal and external
• Compro exclusive S5/S4/S3 mode Power Up Scheduled Recording
• Convenient Remote Controlled Power On/Off
• Hardware timeshifting for instant live TV replay with minimal CPU utilization
• Advanced PIP/POP features can open up to 4 digital TV windows. Also you can watch live TV and playback 1 recorded video files at once
• Video Desktop can stream live TV shows as wallpaper
• Straight-to-Disc recording for analog and digital TV
• Supports hardware MPEG-2 and software MPEG-1/2/4 recording for analog TV/video (A 3rd party MPEG-4 CODEC is required)
• Supports MPEG-2/Transport Stream record/playback in digital TV
• Digital TV supports EPG, subtitle, & Teletext
  (where available, does not support MHEG-5 in UK)
• Analog TV supports Closed Caption
• Single/Multiple still frame captures and remote snapshot
• Captures analog video from Composite, S-Video or Component
• Certified for Windows Vista 32/64 bit

Source: Compro Technology

[WarEagleAU]

Very nice. This looks awesome for an HTPC. My next build may be one. With the ability to stream movies from my pc to my ps3 in the room, its really made me appreciate an HTPC even more.

[Solaris17]

can anyone here answer some questions for me? you see when i get my own place my GF wants tevo....thing is thats expensive and you get charged monthly..so i brought up the HTPC idea she said that sounded cool but i need some questions answered.

1. would you be able to patch your cable to the card to the TV?
2. can you record shows and stuff to a HDD on your rig?
3. can you record more than one channel?
4. I assume if you can do the above said you can FW and RR?
5. Does it use your graphics card to play shows and stuff or does it utalize more cpu?

[farlex85]

I am not the best to answer all of those, but I'll take a stab as I was in the process of putting an htpc together recently but had to abort b/c of my crappy tv.

1. I'm not sure what you mean here. The cable comes in and to your tuner, then to whatever you have to display video. If you have a box, that goes in there too.

2. You can record stuff w/ pretty much any tuner. You can use the software that comes w/ the tuner, although there are usually other options that work better (for instance mce if your doing it on windows).

3. Most tv tuners can record only one channel, but I think there may be some high end ones that do. Usually it will require two tuners to do this. Many will allow you to watch a separate channel while recording on another.

4. Not sure what that means. Fast forward and rewind? Most tv tuners will allow you to pause live tv, or record it, so you can manipulate it, and with the right software simply skip commercials and such, like tivo.

5. Your graphics card doesn't have to work that hard, probably a little more so if your doing hd. The cpu has to work if the tuner doesn't have an encoder built in, if it does it will work a lot less.

Hope this cleared some things up. If I got any of that wrong, sorry and someone correct me. I was gonna build one with my spare parts, but alas my tv won't really allow it. This tuner looks nice though, maybe I can slap this in my main rig.....