Cinergy 400 TV by Terratec

[landrover]

Is there anybody with experience concerning this new and promising TV and capture card? Haven't found any reviews on the Net so far. I am considering ditching the Marvel on my main system and would opt right now to use separate graphics card and capture card instead of a combo like the AIW's.

landrover

[az]

There's a mini-review in c't, I think - if you want, I can read and post about it in the next days.

I can say that it uses a philips tuner though - which is not a bad thing in itself - but there are many 3rd party programs for brooktree tuners (as found on many TV cards, including Hauppauge's and Terratec's TerraTValue - not sure about the latter though)

AZ

[landrover]

Please post the review, I´m very curious. From what I´ve heard, the Philips tuner is good one, and if the accompanying software does it´s job properly, that´s OK with me. The most important feature to me is freedom of choice in codecs.

landrover

[az]

OK, in essence it said, the picture and sound quality are quite good (they said "surprisingly good" picture quality), and that the tuner is a 9 bit one, whatever that means

It uses two applications for watching TV, one being Intervideo WinDVR, which has the ability to do timeshifting, but no video text. C't created a VCD file, which could not be read with either media player or WinDVR. The second one is Terratec CynergyTV, which has a videotext decoder (and can even lay the text transparently over the TV image - WAY better than Hauppauge's concept of using two separate apps to watch TV and Text). CynergyTV can capture with every installed codec (though c't could not capture a divx 5 file with sound).

The card comes with AIST MovieXone 4, and an electronic programming guide by tvtv (at least in germany).
Scheduled recording is possible, in the future even via the epg.

There were compatibility problems with on-board sound on an MSI board.

Terratec has promised frequent driver upgrades, fixing bugs and adding new features.

This summary was done without the article in front of my eyes, so if you want details on anything, just ask

AZ

[landrover]

Thanks for the info. C´T also appears in a Dutch, so I´ll check the stores for the translated article.

landrover

[az]

It wasn't in the current edition, but in one before that

But it really didn't contain much more info, was only one page long

AZ