Black Boxes: nVIDIA Personal Cinema

by Charles Mohnike
Summer/Fall 2002

Personal Cinema marks nVIDIA's entry into the world of consumer video capture and editing, a genre presently dominated by ATI with its All-In-Wonder series. Knowing it's competing with an industry giant, nVIDIA wisely loaded this hardware and software bundle with a long list of features. Personal Cinema includes a powerful 3D video card, a TV tuner, DVD playback (DVD drive not included), video capture and editing, and a software-driven time shift function similar to TiVo and ReplayTV hardware units. With the inclusion of a universal remote control, Personal Cinema makes an excellent base for either a PC-driven home theater or a feature-rich amateur video editing station.

Setting Up the Cinema
At the core of Personal Cinema is nVIDIA's GeForce2, a 3D graphics card with an already-strong reputation among gaming enthusiasts. In our test PC, the card installed without a hitch. We replaced our existing AGP video card with the GeForce2, restarted the machine and loaded the necessary drivers from the accompanying CD-ROM.

The next step was to connect the bundle's second hardware component, the AV/tuner box. Having the tuner hardware and connectors in a separate unit (breakout box rather than on the video card) had two advantages. First, it allowed us to easily attach a VCR and, later, a camcorder, without having to disturb the existing tangle of wires behind our test PC. Second, the separate unit brought the sensitive tuner components out of the inside of our PC, where electronic currents can cause problems with video reception. The tuner box accepted both composite and S-video in and out, as well as a standard coaxial input for antenna, cable and satellite connections.

Bundle of Joy
Next, we explored the features on the Personal Cinema's substantial software bundle. The video editing software included was MGI VideoWave 4.0SE. It allowed us to capture digital audio or video from the tuner box inputs, then perform basic management and editing functions via the intuitive VideoWave interface. It also allowed for real-time preview of material as it was captured, a feature that's often lacking with video hardware less robust than this card.

The bundle also included Intervideo WinDVD, a player that expands on the usual DVD playback functions by adding zoom, pan, playback bookmarks, and still-image capture. The DVD picture quality was excellent in both windowed and full-screen modes, and the card had no trouble displaying DVD audio and video consistently, even when we performed other relatively resource-intensive Windows tasks.

Capture and Encode
Another accompanying Intervideo product, WinDVR, allowed us to capture live video from the tuner card's coax input and encode it to MPEG-2 video format for future playback or storage. WinDVR offered one of Personal Cinema's most exciting features for PC/TV fans time shifting. Like the popular hardware units, WinDVR software allowed us to view, record or schedule recording of a program by clicking its entry in the electronic program guide. The time-shifting mode, allowed us to pause or replay "live" TV.

The nVIDIA Personal Cinema functions well as a DVD player, a TiVo-like video recorder, a solid home-video editor, and, with an exceptional 3D video engine, a fabulous gaming card.

SMART SPECS
System requirements
Windows 98 or later
400MHz Pentium II/AMD equivalent
128MB RAM
free AGP slot
sound card
5GB hard drive space

Tuner AV breakout box
S-video and composite in/out
coaxial input
stereo audio out

Graphics board
Memory: 64MB video RAM
Processor: GeForce 2
Encoding format: MPEG-2

COMPANY: nVIDIA
CONTACT: (408) 486-2000
WEB SITE: www.nVIDIA.com
PRICE: $199