New NVIDIA® Dual-Analog TV Tuner Turns PCs Into Home Entertainment Centers
 

NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, today introduced the NVIDIA DualTV tuner, the first TV tuner for PCs to offer two TV tuners on a single card with comprehensive personal video recording functionality, unique MediaSqueeze™ disk space saving technology, and support for the Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition (MCE) operating system.
The NVIDIA DualTV tuner is available immediately for $169 USD. from the NVIDIA Store Web site at store.nvidia.com

With its unique two-tuner technology, the NVIDIA DualTV tuner transforms an MCE-equipped PC into a bona fide home entertainment system. With a touch of a mouse button, users can schedule recordings of their favorite TV shows and watch them when they want, record two TV shows simultaneously, or watch one channel while recording another, as well as watch pause, and rewind live or recorded TV shows.
With the emergence of portable media players and ubiquitous broadband availability, NVIDIA DualTV users can watch their programs from almost anywhere—in the home, on the go, or over the Internet. Programs recorded with the NVIDIA DualTV tuner can be transferred to personal media players and portable game players that play back video, and many other portable media players. Live or recorded shows can be streamed throughout the home to game consoles or Media Center Extenders; and with Orb Networks software (www.orb.com), NVIDIA DualTV tuner users can watch live or recorded TV shows from anywhere in the world over the Internet for personal use.


The NVIDIA DualTV tuner offers a unique MediaSqueeze technology that allows users to store more of their favorite TV programs on their hard disk, DVD, or portable media player. Users can record live TV shows at a lower bit-rate than normal or "transrate" previously-recorded TV programs into a lower bit-rate to preserve disk space, without significant loss in picture quality. In internal testing using a Tektronix PQA300 MPEG image quality measurement system, NVIDIA found its picture quality rating at medium bit-rates scored consistently better than competitive products recorded at a higher bit-rate.


NVIDIA has applied its renowned PureVideo™ technology to the DualTV tuner enabling the highest possible picture quality on a PC to date. In addition to PureVideo, the NVIDIA DualTV tuner features:

• 3D comb filter—to create high-quality color separations and enhance image detail.
• 3D noise reduction hardware—to clean up the signal, thus removing artifacts.
• In-line TV amplifier—to boost weak signals.
• Multi-stream hardware encoder—to record crystal clear TV shows with low CPU utilization.

In addition to these picture-quality enhancing features, the NVIDIA DualTV tuner carries the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) certification, signifying that it meets ISF standards for home theater-quality television tuning and recording. Since 1994, ISF has provided comprehensive testing and certification of performance quality, and a publicly recognized logo program for high-end consumer electronics products that consumers identify with superior quality.

"There are other TV tuners in the market today, but the NVIDIA DualTV tuner offers some key differentiators that make it stand out," said Scott Vouri, general manager of multimedia at NVIDIA. "Based on our internal testing it’s measurably the best picture quality of any dual tuner card and saves disk space. It’s easy to use and install, and is designed for people who want to watch what they want, where they want, whenever they want."

1 PQA image quality measurements are based on the Tektronix PQA300 analyzer, the "Cheers" television show reference content, and a Denon standalone DVD player model DVD-3910 with SDI output to PQA300. MPEG2 files generated by the NTSC tuner boards are burned onto DVD-Video discs with ArcSoft ShowBiz2 without transcoding or transrating. Lower PQA scores indicates better image quality. NVIDIA DualTV PQR-Y scores are 6.95 and 7.43 for "best" and "fair" settings respectively (under Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005); its PQR-YC scores are 7.43 (best) and 7.92 (fair). ATI TV Wonder Elite PQA-Y scores are 7.76 (best) and 12.93 (fair), and the PQR-YC scores are 8.26 (best) and 13.58 (fair). Hauppauge PVR-500 MCE PQA-Y scores are 6.95 (best) and 11.63 (fair), and the PQR-YC scores are 7.42 (best) and 12.32 (fair). Driver versions for DualTV, TV Wonder Elite, and PVR-500 MCE are 59.477, 6.14.10.66, and 2.0.30.23074, respectively.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation is the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies. The Company creates innovative, industry-changing products for computing, consumer electronics, and mobile devices. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com
Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, the features, benefits, performance and capabilities of the NVIDIA Dual TV tuner and PureVideo technology and availability of the NVIDIA DualTV tuner are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, manufacturing defects or software bugs, loss of performance when the NVIDIA DualTV tuner card is installed in a PC, incompatibility of technologies, unavailability of media content, reliance on third-party manufacturers, release of a new more efficient product by a competitor, slow adoption by the market of using a PC as a home entertainment system, the impact of competitive products and pricing alternatives, changes in the MCE operating system, changes in industry standards and interfaces, our dependence on third-party developers and publishers and other risks detailed from time to time in the NVIDIA reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-Q for the fiscal [delete one fiscal and insert space] year ended January 29, 2006. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.