Nvidia shows 'best quality' twin-tuner TV card

Nvidia has launched a PC add-in TV tuner card with two tuners, both of them ready to receive and record analogue broadcasts around the world. Nvidia has two versions: the NTSC-supporting part unveiled this week and a PAL/SECAM model.

The DualTV card is pitched at Windows XP Media Center Edition systems and users who want to be able to watch one programme while recording another. The board incorporates Nvidia's PureVideo technology the better, the company claimed, to separate out the colour and brightness information bonded in the broadcast signal and to remove noise from the picture. There's also an integrated amplifier to boost weak input signals.

The upshot, Nvidia claimed, was the best picture quality of any dual-tuner card on the market. The company also touted its data compression system, MediaSqueeze, used to save disk space when the card is used with PVR software.

The card ships with an S-video, composite video, co-axial and set of audio cables, along with a variety of adaptors and cable splitters. There's an FM antenna in the box too.

The NTSC DualTV is available in the US now for around $169. Nvidia said the PAL version is almost certainly not going to make an appearance in the UK thanks to the government mandated switch over to digital at the end of the decade. Our forecast: expect the announcement of a digital product in due course. ®