ATI’s Theater 550 Pro MPEG2 encoder was released back in late 2004 with much fanfare. The Theater 550 Pro was ATI’s first hardware MPEG2 encoder chip for use in add-in TV tuner cards. When products arrived it was met with great fanfare for its superior mage quality that trounced the competition. The initial Theater 550 Pro based TV tuner cards were mostly PCI-based add-in cards as PCI Express wasn’t adopted for anything but graphics cards at the time. However with PCI Express slots showing up on more systems nowadays PowerColor decided it was time to release a PCI Express x1 based TV tuner card. Enter the PowerColor Theater 550 Pro PCI Express. PowerColor won’t be winning any awards for their naming scheme but the important question is does the PowerColor Theater 550 Pro PCI Express perform as well as its PCI counterparts such as ATI’s TV Wonder Elite and Sapphire’s Theater 550 Pro Theatrix.
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Feb 16, 2006, 04:15 PM
